Yeah, the big working weekend I had in store? Not so much. Which means this week is going to be like sitting on an ungreased dildo. Oh, boy, can’t wait! *thunk*
I was giving some thought to the cosmic oops that my life has become. I always thought it was best to be easygoing, to go with the proverbial flow, to just laugh at time because, really, what else can you do?
But at a time when there’s an overabundance of good people getting treated shoddily and the least-deserving types rolling in luck, you’ve got to wonder sometimes about exactly why it is that the good guys have to finish last?
I wanted to do some deep, existential post tonight. But I don’t have it in me right now. I worked so hard to get away from my life in Pittsburgh, only for it to get dumped into my lap. Goes to show that no matter how far or fast you run, no matter how hard you work to change your life, you can’t really escape.
It doesn’t mean you have to accept it, though. I’ve been too nice for too long. I suffered through too many bad dates, faked too many smiles and spared too many feelings, and I’m done. All the while, I knew that I was in a bad/useless situation, one that wasn’t going to be fulfilling to me in any way, shape or form. But I was always “nice” about it.
Anyway, I say all of this to convey that I know what I want. I have always known what I wanted, since I was a wee lass. I can seem indecisive and even enthusiastic for things that don’t or wouldn’t make me happy. But no matter how far away I seem to get from the things I wanted, the fact is that I still want them and believe I’ll either get them or some reasonable facsimile of them.
One of these days, anyway. I just hope I don’t forget what I hoped to achieve or be.
They posed the question at church this week, asking us what we wanted to be when we were 5 years old. Heh. I think I wanted to be a writer and, lo, it is so. But the point of the exercise wasn’t to find out what you wanted to be but, rather, that even when we were cared for/clothed/fed, we had the first formation of dreams in our hearts.
But then, at some point — under the pressure of paying bills and taking care of everything and everyone else — you get too busy to heed the calling that was placed in you. And that maybe, just maybe, the desires we have deep in the all-but-forgotten parts of our hearts are pretty close to what God wants for us.
Like the pastor asked, “Were we a byproduct of circumstance, or were we put here for a purpose?”
I’m struggling with my purpose. If I wanted to be a writer and I’m making a living as a writer, did I fulfill my purpose and there’s nothing more out there for me? Was I meant to work eleventy billion hours a week and have to take care of myself and my mother and, to boot, have an absolutely unremarkable string of overnight relationships that had to dissipate because, really, can I bring anyone home when my mom is in the next room? GAH.
We talked about how making too many concessions and compromises distracts us from remembering, fine-tuning and following the dreams that were designed just for us. One of the Proverbs says that “Where there is no vision, the people will perish.”
But I think we’re suffering from an abundance of visions — I like to call it “having 17 cooks in the kitchen to make a grilled cheese sandwich.” Too many cooks/visions/dreams means the dreams get diluted — it’s now a collective nightmare instead of an individual destiny.
Or maybe that’s just how it feels at this step of the journey.
I am tired of this life feeling like one big fat cosmic joke. It’s like I was conceived by accident and my life pattern of chaos and cosmic clusterfucks have taken over and washed away the footprints I’ve been trying to leave on this earth.
(Although, my carbon footprint seems to be doing just fine — so far, that seems to be the only mark I’ve managed to make, and that’s the one I’m trying to minimize!)
The message of the Sunday service was a simple, begin to dream again and then hop the fuck to it. Well, OK, that was MY interpretation, but you get the point. 😉
I don’t think I’ve ever stopped dreaming, but I do know that I’ve stopped dreaming BIG. And I can’t remember the last time I worked on one of my books. I need to revisit that dream of writing trashy romance novels and getting paid gobs of money on the screenplays, so I can go write on beaches and be serviced served by strapping young lads bearing alcohol and suntan lotion.
Now THAT’S inspirational!