Thoughts on a walk

Well, I had an hour and a half long walk tonight/this morning, and since I’m supposed to be up in two hours anyway, I figure I might as well forego sleep and write. It’s really quiet walking home at four in the morning, and it’s really conducive to thinking.

Dreams, hopes, aspirations. People talk about them, plan their lives around them, and do everything they can to realize them. In my mind, with these kinds of things you have three options. 1) You can do everything you can to realize your dream, hope, or aspiration come hell or high water. 2) You can give up on your dream and find another passion to follow. 3) You give up altogether and settle for something less. As far as I’m concerned, option number 3 is unacceptable. A person can never reach their full potential if they aren’t passionate about what they do. Deciding what to do, and what you want to do, you have to have passion behind it. Otherwise you’ll be miserable all the time.

Don’t seek and don’t expect. A friend of mine told me this once, but I never really put all that much thought into it. But since I had the time, I really gave it some deeper thought and broke it down. Don’t seek. Instead of meaning not to go looking for a dream, it means not to go blindly looking. Don’t go looking for something that isn’t there or can’t exists. Rather, know your potential, know your capabilities, know yourself. By doing that, you can find the best way to realize your dreams. Don’t expect. Basically, don’t expect things to go according to plan. Don’t expect to get what you want. Don’t expect life to be easy. It isn’t. You will be tested, there will be pain, it will be difficult. As long as you don’t let your expectations get the best of you, you’ll be able to find the right path to what you want.

For the most part I’ve got a bunch of my hopes and dreams figured out, but some things still elude me. I’ve been referred to a lot of ways. I’ve been called “my guy”, “the guy”, “Mr. dependable”, “Mr. indestructible”, “bro”, among other names. People depend on me, but few if any seem to really care. I’m an implement – an instrument, a weapon, a shield, a toy. I am a machine. When people need me, they call on me for whatever purpose because they know that I can handle just about any situation. Whatever damage I suffer, I can recover from. Whatever difficulties I come up against, I can overcome them. After they’re done, I’m forgotten until the next time I’m needed. Before, this used to depress me, leaving me questioning my self-worth. I felt like it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t around. Now though, it doesn’t affect me so much. I’ve come to accept it as a fact of my life. It’s why I tell people not to apologize to me, that they don’t need to thank me, and not to worry about me, whether they care about me or not. Because in the end, if I’m not around or not needed, I don’t exist.

It’s a bit depressing at times because I hate being single – I’m not good at it. Wanting to have someone to love, wanting to devote myself to someone, that’s not a problem. I just hope someone could feel that way about me before I’m damaged beyond repair. So here I sit, sweaty, exhausted, and my leg shot to all hell and feeling like it’s going to explode. But not for a second do I doubt or question why I do what I do. For every second of agony that I endure, it means that someone else doesn’t have to. For every breath I lose, someone else gains more. It’s a fair if not beneficial trade-off, so very little thought has to go into it. Until I've got someone for whom I need to stop taking all this damage and enduring the pain, I'll keep going on doing what I'm doing. In the story of life, I’m no main character. I’m the guy who does much, achieves much, and then is left to be forgotten in the pages.

I’ll close this entry with some lyrics to a song sung by Frank Sinatra.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me
I’ll get along
Just you forget about me
Be happy, my love

Just say our little show is over
And so the story ends
Why not call it a day, in a sensible way
And we’ll remain friends

Look out, look out for yourself
Should be the rule
You just give your heart and your love
To whomever you love, don’t you be a fool

Baby why stop and cling
To some fading thing that used to be
So if you can forget
Don’t you worry ‘bout me”

A Fresh Start

It's been a while since I last blogged. I felt like my old one had run its course, so instead of continuing on there, I decided to make a new one.

The last couple of months have been hard. I've been awash in questions, trying to make sense of my life. I've gotten some things figured out, but other aspects have me ending up with even more questions than I started with.

Professionally, I've found my passion and I've started on the path to reach my end goals. What seemed impossible before has been opened up, and I finally have a chance of realizing what has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. Needless to say, it won't be easy, but for the first time in a long time, I find myself driven. I want to make this happen come hell or high water, and I won't let it slip away without a fight. To that end, I've applied myself to a degree that I'm fairly surprised at. Hopefully, I'll be able to find the strength to stay the course.

Personally, my life is still a jumble. I'm still sorting things out, figuring out who I am. For the most part, things are better than a few months ago, but it's still just not quite right. It's funny how something can seem so perfect and make so much sense and yet not get a chance to happen. At the same time, I'm at a loss as to what I can do. I'm having a really tough time moving forward, and I'm doing everything I can to avoid reverting to how I used to be. So right now, I just am. Trying to make sense of things that don't make sense just turns me around in circles, but with this eating at me, I can't ignore it. All I can do is go day to day.

We say that we don't mean to hurt each other, but we do, and sometimes continue to do so, knowingly or otherwise. We make our choices because we feel that, at the time the choices are made, that they are the right ones. Thus, there is no such thing as a right or wrong choice, we make the choices we believe are right. Now, that's not to say there isn't such thing as a good or bad. We make our choices, and we have to live with the consequences. For some, the consequences may hit closer to home than others, but there is no such thing as a choice without consequence. It's from the consequences where we find out whether the choices we made were good or bad.

That being said, one should never underestimate the power that a single choice can hold. In my case, before I knew my potential and I knew my talents, but all the talk I did had no backing. Most of this was just me living up everyone else's image of me. All around me people had concluded that I was a wash out, that I wouldn't amount to anything no matter how hard I tried. This was really my own fault. I didn't care that people thought of me that way and just lived up to their expectations, which only further reinforced the image. It was a vicious cycle. But then that one person came along who chose not to see me like that. The one person who believed in me, and believed that I could actually become something. She didn't expect me to be anything but me, and she pushed me to find what I wanted and to go for it. And most importantly of all, she got me to believe in myself. She showed me that I knew what I was capable of and that I needed to fulfill my potential, not just for my sake, but for the sakes of those whose lives I could make better. It was nothing short of magic.

I can only hope that I've had some positive effect on her life. She's never really said much about it, but if I've improved her life even by the tiniest amount, if I've helped her out of some bit of loneliness or sadness, if by making her laugh I could give her a bit of happiness, then I'm glad. There's a lot of things I wish could happen, but as the old saying goes, "wishing don't make it so".

So, at this point, as I move between my desk and my cigarette out on the balcony, I'm left with questions. Questions seemingly without answers, or for which I have yet to find the answer. But, questions lead to choices, and choices lead to consequences. Here's to hoping that I make good choices. I'll close this entry with a quote I found while randomly surfing the net. It's about how simple things, simple choices, can have profound effects that you don't always see.

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around" - Leo F. Buscaglia