seventh iteration

I'm looking through the panes of a huge window right now, broken up by metal grids.  Outside it's 70 degrees and there are a dozen people sitting on a deck enjoying coffee and conversation.  An old couple; he has curly white hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head, she is holding his hand and staring absently at the traffic.  Two young girls; both in yoga clothes though I doubt they just came from yoga, messy buns and drape shoulder tops, and absorbed in their cell phones.  A table of apparently old friends in their 30's; they're vaguely hipsters, all wear wedding bands, and one has a teeny tiny little baby girl in her arms.  All of these people are at different points in life, all of them have a story, and I can't help but wonder what those stories are and maybe also why.  How'd they get here?  Where were they before, where are they going next?  I wonder this of myself too.

Frequently I feel that time passes slowly if it passes at all.  The day to day trivial nature of my life has at times felt stagnant and if it was moving, it was moving at a glacial pace.  Conversely, I've written about how quickly time can seem to pass us by without our notice, sort of a blink and you miss it type deal.  Not this last year... not for me.  Like water through a crack in the dam it does pass, and I now find myself facing the seventh iteration of this blog after what feels like a lifetime of waiting.

So without further adieu, I give you the announcement of the day:

THE SIX YEAR ANNIVERSARY FOR 

MUSINGS OF A 

SELF-PROCLAIMED AUTHOR

It's funny for me to look back at six years of blog posts and see where I've been, what my story was and why.  Moments of the past are easy to forget for most people but for me I've essentially been writing a guidebook to my life.  I have the luxury of walking backward through time and reading about all sorts of things.  Moments of panic, moments of lust, and moments of anger.  Times of laughter and times of joy and of course a few times of sadness.  I can see where inspiration struck, I can see where jealousy took hold, and I can see the benefits that came with a job well done.

The "iteration" blogs are peppered through all of that, the roadside markers of my half-written life, and they give me a little bit of guidance if not a little introspection.

When I wrote the sixth iteration a year ago I spent a lot of time mourning over the boo-hoo nature that came with living in Texas and how great living back in the north was going to be (which it largely has been).  You could argue how moving to Austin was an attempt to leave my comfort zone for something new and daring, and moving north was getting back not necessarily to said comfort zone but a place where I could progress the most.

2016 in large was spent white-knuckling the steering wheel of life.  My own reality was absolutely shooting past the windows at 100 miles per hour through changes in jobs, locations I worked and lived in, and the people around me.  After moving to Minneapolis and writing the sixth iteration, I wanted to wrap the year by slowing it all way the hell down.  Then I could follow with a 2017 where I'd preferably be able to focus my attention on (as I wrote back then) a "return to form."

Admittedly when I look back on the last year I do see the benefit of a life where time passes slowly.  The slow passage of time allows for plenty of moments to look at your surroundings and truly see clearly into what is good and what isn't.  If you're paying attention... as I was... seeing things clearly allows for tremendous change.  Life cannot always move at such a breakneck pace because if it does, or rather if it is, you're not present enough to notice what's going on around you.

Looking back at the sixth iteration it's with a certain anguish in my throat that I read how I wanted to "return to form" and get back to my roots.  Some of you know how I tend to put things out to the universe, my idle thoughts and hopes, only to see them become self-fulfilling prophecies in one way or another.  Only now as the year wraps do I see how this particular prophecy came to fruition.

A return to form with the blog meant going back to what started "musings" in the first place: heartbreak.

I think for Derek and I, everything was just always moving so fast.  Quick to say I love you, quick to move in together, quick to move across the country together... quick to move across the country again together.  It was only when things slowed down that we started to relax and look at our lives.  What'll make us happy?  What steps do we take to get there?  So on and so forth.  That's when the problems crept in.  Through hindsight I realize moving so fast kept the problems in a blurry state; I couldn't focus on them because they weren't huge, and they weren't very severe in relation to everything else that was going on.

They were always there though, and it was certainly easier to just ignore them.  I think that's true for many things in life, don't you?  It's often easier not to deal with the white elephant in the room; it's standing quietly in the corner not doing anything, why make a big deal about it?  The trouble with that is how the big white elephant starts to break the floorboards under it's weight, splintering and cracking the foundation until eventually it erodes beneath you as well.  Not the best analogy but you catch my drift.

You put out into the world what you want to get back and I got it back.  Not that I'm some crystal-ball wielding gypsy or that I can predict lotto numbers, but I tend to search for meaning in things any way I can.  In this one I found meaning quite simply.  Doesn't make me happy necessarily, but it does bring a little bit of contentment.  If that makes sense?

All this makes me look at the future with a different perspective.  One component of a return to form came about by writing through Blogger again and not a website I never fully understood or took advantage of.  Another component came in working to write solid blogs that told a story from the heart, not just fluff to get something out (i.e. monthly updates).  I have to remind myself how sometimes it's only better to speak when you can improve the silence, even though my every instinct is to just talk and talk forever.

I rewatched 26 Golden Things a few nights ago.  I'd been messing around on Youtube and stumbled across a song I'd used in the video.  Immediately I knew I needed to find one of the DVD's and put it in to watch.  First and foremost there was a lot of crying, lemme get that out of the way right now.  Tears shed over the movie in the past came about as a sort of lament for how things used to be.  "Look how much fun you were having!  Look how happy everyone was!  Why can't it be like that now?  What had to change?  Why can't you just try harder?"  I do that to myself often... blame myself for not trying harder.  As if to say I don't try hard enough on a daily basis which isn't a fair observation.

This time, unlike any other since I made the film, was different.  There was a familiar draw, I suppose, for lack of a better word.  It's easy to forget why I made the movie in the first place.  I think on the surface 26 Golden Things came across as "I have a bucket list and I'm gonna spend lots of money to do all the things!" but I really only did it because I was adrift in my life.

Confusion over who I was, what I was doing, why I was doing it... all brought about because of a breakup that disrupted my life story.  Not a breakup, but really the breakup, the one that would end up defining who I'd later become.  Me filming my life for a year didn't even start when it was supposed to, it began at the end of January in a split-second decision.  "I'm going to do this."  I'd been single for 9 months, went through a brief relationship that burned out way too fast, and ultimately decided I didn't want to find love again anytime soon.  With that decision came the first item on the list of 26 things and it was #1 - Letting it die: the realization you are finally over your ex.

I can look at 26 Golden Things now as a roadmap to eventual success.  Make a list, start crossing things off.  Involve your friends.  Involve your family.  Acknowledge the challenges, don't shy away from tears.  Be open and be direct and go after the things you want because each step you take forward will only put the past further into just that: the past.

Take what happened and learn from it, grow from it, and be better because of it.

I'm not over Derek yet, and no I'm not going to try to recreate 26 Golden Things this next year as... what... 32 Semi-Tired and Usually Cranky Things?  But I am going to do something.  I'm not sure exactly what form it will take yet but my plans are evolving and coming together and that's a step in the right direction, isn't it?  To have hope for something?  Maybe I'll announce it in the New Year's blog, maybe I won't.  Maybe I'll show up in 365 days and shout out loud in the eighth iteration "hey, look at this neat thing I did and guess what else, I'm happy!"

Happy.  I write it like it's some elusive thing right now, which in many ways it is.  I feel like I can get back to "happy," as if it were a destination, at the drop of a hat.  I also feel like it's at the end of a hallway that keeps getting longer and longer.  But like I said before, sometimes all it takes is putting it out there and then it comes back to me.  Maybe not how I anticipated, and maybe only in hindsight does it smack me in the face, but it does come back.  I think focusing on myself for a year, uncovering what makes me tick and what drives my passion, can only be a good thing for this iteration.  And while I'm at it, I might as well address that sometimes it takes a long while to make your millions, but sometimes it happens over night.

Never hurts to throw that anecdote out to the ether.

Last year for the music video component of this blog I posted one by the band Lucius for their song "Dusty Trails," choosing to focus on the lyric "we'll all be okay."  Listening to that song today I can't help but focus instead on a different lyric: "painful as growing is, we can't forget it's our ticket to taking the reins."  I'd like to take the reins again, I think.  I'm ready to be in charge again and start thinking for myself again.  I assume only good can come from it, but that is something only time and this next year can tell me.  The key is being open and mindful... and if you have the privilege of a slow-running life as I currently do, then it also just takes a little bit more presence.

This year it is "Crystals" by Of Monsters and Men.  The lyrics that speak to me are "But I'm okay in see-through skin, I forgive what is within.  'Cause I'm in this house, I'm in this home, all my time."  It's best with the volume turned way up, in my humble opinion.

That's all I've got for you with this iteration, thank you for reading and listening and a hundred thousand other things you have no idea about.  Thank you.

Ciao for now (c;