Turn on the Bright Lights

I stand at a point in my life where the next step I take can be in any direction. I can do whatever I please. Contemplate a career change, a new house to live in. I can take the time to ask myself: What do you want to do now? Of course, I could fall back on everything I’ve done before. I’ve become quite proficient at mindlessly steaming milk and smiling at people I hate. I can sleepwalk through coffee jobs. It’s become automatic. I can do it.
But I could also do something new.
I stood in the shower this morning and felt overwhelmed. Flooded with thoughts. Am I not terrified? Not full of glossy resolutions and slick, streamlined blogs? I realize I spend a lot of time attempting to present myself as being very cohesive and together. Yet now more than ever it feels foolish to even try. It keeps me from trying anything new. There’s no room for falls and experimentation. I whittle each movement down to a presentation that has a message, a question, a bit of wisdom. Fuck that! I have no idea what to do now.
It frustrates me how there will be times when you are filled with ideas for things to do and write and try and be, and then, almost as quickly as they came, they are gone. Moreover, they always come at times when you’re not able to capture them. Like in the shower this morning. I sat down at my computer again and whoosh, almost entirely gone. I struggled to get down what I remembered. Things always come to me at inopportune times, like when I’m riding my bicycle and listening to my iPod, or when I’m gazing happily at the stage watching a show. Can they be analyzed, these varying moments that bring such possibility?
The other day I lay on my back in Ladd Circle looking at the sky, brilliantly blue and speckled with clouds (what kind of clouds are they? It occurs to me that I cannot name almost anything in nature. Yet I am semi-encyclopedic in my knowledge of music. This is wrong), and I felt really small. Not in a bad way, just small. As if looking up at the overwhelming hugeness of the sky was simply giving me proper perspective again. Things seemed to not matter so much.
Could I not take this moment in my life, where I am bound by nothing, and really invest the time to take a fresh, intelligent step? To re-think everything I’ve valued and done so far? Isn’t every moment good for that, and aren’t I just being lazy and simplistic by needing such a moment to ask myself what the hell I’m doing?
Well, yes.
Nonetheless, that’s where I find myself. Asking a lot of questions and feeling afraid to try and answer them. Maybe it’s simply the overwhelming silence, the space afforded by having no job and no obligations, that has filled me with such terror. I have all the time in the world to do….what?
I could snap into action tomorrow and find some job that I love. Shannon put forth that I’d do well as a music supervisor. It sounds like a dream job, but for the fact that I have no contacts in this town or any other, only an obsessive love of listening to and collecting music coupled with a high-speed internet connection.
But I could find something if I set myself to it. I could find some job that didn’t fill me with disgust and drain my energy and make me feel more and more isolated from my fellow man. Some job that would cause me to look back on the past year of my life and think did that really happen? Did I really put up with that for so long?
I could do it. And I could take the time to learn the names of things. Of clouds and trees and that amazing dark blue bird I saw arching its wings majestically as I rode along the Eastbank Esplanade last week.
I could do all these things.
But resolutions are bunk. The future is unknown and undetermined, or so I believe. But that’s just one more question I can ask myself. It’s a fucking mess, and that’s just how things are most of the time.
Don’t get the impression that I’m pessimistic or overly worried. Really, I’m just musing aloud. I just watered my little basil and garlic plants that Shannon gave me, and put the kettle on. The garlic has grown visibly just in the last few days. It makes me smile.
Spring is here. The robins are returning to the world. I am in love.
It’s up to me now.