It's been five years since I've blogged or written seriously. I've been trying to wrap my mind around that lately and it's been tough. I've been living for too long on instinct like a cat. Or like a creature under water weighed down by the dimness of the ocean that surrounded me. It did not occur to me until the past two months that I have been missing this outlet as a sure and pure way to analyze my thought patterns and keep my mind in balance. I've never used words in a way to negatively impact anyone. It wasn't until lately when I was accused of writing in a way that I didn't, that I took stock of why I haven't been writing at all. I had somehow become a shell of myself. Opening myself up to the insecurity of constant criticism in a way that affected my analytic behavior. I allowed intimidation to affect how my natural self defense mechanisms and synapsis fire cleanly inside myself. I have always been a writer though. Since I was a child. It has served as a way over the years to delve into my own inner workings and mechanisms to self correct and reconstruct my psyche when it threatens to break under certain types of pressure. How can I experience mental growth and lack of stagnation if I fail to access my own mental processes? How can I avoid falling into the traps and projections of insecurity from others if I fail to hold my own narratives accountable for their shortcomings? Especially when as a human, I truly only have honest access to my own mind. I can't read yours, so I have to guess or trust that you are communicating honestly with yourself firstly, and me secondly. Then there are other variables like whether I am talking to someone in a moment who is emotionally inconsistent or fragmented, or whether I understand the other persons communication style at all. Do you see how this is a trap for someone with a great imagination? If I don't reign in that beast, I can wander in the desert for forty days on possibility alone. If I don't keep myself in check, I can't flesh out a conversation with someone else well and then communication falls apart over time, even if it once had great flow.
I haven't told many people about my failed attempts at therapy over the years. It is disastrous for me every time. I do not do well in an environment where I am sitting across from a highly educated individual, telling them about the things that have caused me anguish. Always, because I can be so sensitive when people are mean, it is because I am hurt so deeply by the actions of someone else. Every single time, I am validated at my communication structures and attempts in the beginning until I start to lose ground and give up. I become unstructured and overly emotional, and end up a soppy mess, using endless tissues. The conversations always end with me asking the pivotal question: If you are saying that I am right and I still feel this way, then what can I actually DO about it?
The answer is always the same: Let it go. This is someone else's problem to fix and you have to release yourself from the accountability of that/those individual/s.
Ugh. Again. I know.
So that is the real problem. I am a good fixer. You have a problem, and you tell me about it? I'm immediately going to launch into a grid in my head of possible solutions. Then I'm going to hone in on the quickest and most efficient solution and try and help you fix it. I should actually get paid money for this. This should be my job. Where this becomes problematic is in relationships. I easily become an enabler which relieves others of their own responsibility and then creates hostility on all ends in different ways. I quickly lose sight of my own needs and self care goes out the window. When you struggle with several auto immune diseases, especially ones that create emotional instability, this is a recipe for disaster. It also causes me to become overly involved in something that I do not need to always be a part of and I quickly become annoying. Ha. It opens everyone up to unhealthy co-dependancy. Sounds like I need to listen more, maybe ask more questions in retrospect and actually do less myself.
Without writing, I fail to identify the pitfalls of these actions in the moment. This blog is an exercise and if you are here and willing to take this journey with me, maybe we can dialogue and learn together. So here goes nothing.
I have this problem. I have identified the healthy vehicle I can use to help begin to solve it for myself and now, as I am often compelled to do, I turn to biology as navigational inspiration. The math. The science. They are clean structures for me to apply to issues within myself that allow for course correction. Remember. Everything is a math equation. If it's not working, your math is bad. Maybe you just need to move some integers around, or maybe you're missing a piece of the equation itself. You could be over simplifying or over complicating. Either way, if you don't allow for the big picture, your equation is broken and you simply need to work from the solution back to the beginning to create the correct formula.
In the plant and animal kingdoms, there are three types of identifiable relationships in an ecosystem: Mutualism, Commensalism and Parasitism. Mutualism is ideal. It means that the organisms involved are mutually benefiting from the partnership. This is highly ideal in people. Commensalism is ok. It implies that the host is not negatively impacted by it's partner, but it is not reaping a reward either. When we apply this concept to humanity, it seems mostly unrealistic as with humanity we are adding in the complexity of consciousness and the emotional backlash that occurs with the way that our society is built. Parasitism is the final example and is especially damaging in human relationships if you relate it to the former sentence. Parasitism is when one organism gains as it's host suffers. If I am striving to create relationships of mutualistic tendencies in my life, what key elements do I need to manifest in myself first? See? Find my ideal solution first, and then work backwards.
Bear with me here as I switch topics for a moment. I promise that it will all tie in together in a few moments.
I love music. I am a musician. I have been since I can remember anything at all. Music is passion to me. In my work as a musician, I cannot reasonably reign that passion in to make any sense at all without rules and structure applied to the situation. Or focus. A good friend of mine reintroduced me to this fact as we sat at the bar about a month ago and she attempted to describe to me how she is able to create so much music. She has to give herself rules because the possibilities are endless otherwise. I am now reminded of the discipline I was taught in my youth. The posture as I sat at the piano. The hours of scales up and down the keys to build muscle memory. The vocal exercises that I had to do before I was allowed to just launch into song, especially when I was attempting to collaborate with others. The structure is necessary to marry different talents together in a moment. Any art I have ever practiced has required discipline as a basic element for success. Martial arts. Weight training. Cooking. Baking. Painting. Even gardening. I can foster endless fantasies of letting my garden grow wild so that gnomes and unicorns can knock at my back door and come have tea with me, but in reality, I'm gonna grow some mealy and puny potatoes that way. I will actually have zero viable output from that garden if I allow it to grow unfettered. If I want to plant seeds in the spring that will produce happy, healthy plant life and beautiful ripe produce; I must create a balanced ecosystem. I have to have the correct soil PH for my seedlings so that they have the essential vitamin and mineral content for ideal growth. I have to give them consistent water flow to avoid mealy or anemic vegetation. I have to exercise pest control to avoid crop devastation. I have to have ideal lighting conditions and plant according to regional weather patterns. The list goes on and on.
In short, I have to do work. There is a strange alchemical recipe involved here. The desire has to be real and present, but the dream is not sustainable without boundaries and focus. So now we come full circle... If these concepts are true of everything else I apply myself to that I adore, why wouldn't the same be necessary of a relationship with a person? Or even myself for that matter? There are rules I must apply to keep the pendulum from swinging too far to the left or right. If I am searching for balance in my human interactions and my own life, I must also apply rules. I must also apply focus. I take one of my heroes, John Lennon as an example. John had to learn to play instruments. He did not just pick them up and dream songs into existence. I mean he did, but how did he actually build the dream? He had to work. He respected hard working people and talked about it often, because he was a hard working dreamer, especially collaborating with others the way he did over the years to create music. We all know about the personality clashes within The Beatles. The struggle to produce and balance their albums out. There was focus involved there to bring the dreams to life. If you ever watch the documentary Imagine, he and Yoko talk openly about the ways in which they had to sacrifice to make their relationship successful. Misguided years spent and space needed to hone in the visions and bring a realistic dream into focus. John talks very candidly about what he had to give up in order to be a great father to his second son and the regret he felt at not offering that environment to his first son. Either way, to me the message is clear. We dreamers must dream. But that's only one part of the equation. The work is the other part of it and doing the work when we don't always feel like it. Experiencing the loss of the dream and then working to build it back from scratch takes much introspection and internal effort from an individual.
Isn't this the hardest part for us? The struggle to always be working when we work so un naturally every day to make money. To pay bills. To afford life. At the end of every day, how hard do I want to work at maintaining a healthy connection with myself or with a partner? The answer for most of us is probably that we don't. Inertia is so much simpler to settle into on any given day. Technology especially affords us so many easy outs. Just sit in front of the tv. Just get on my phone and play some games or look at everyone else's fabulous life for awhile to escape the work of my own. Even now while I am attempting to be creative and apply myself to the discipline of writing, I find myself trying to justify a break to check Twitter. I have been sitting here for about forty minutes. I don't quite think I deserve a break yet in the middle of completing complex thoughts on math, biology and how to maintain a successful life in this confusing world.
I know that my body is not built for a life like this. It is simple science. My body evolved to live a different life and technology took us further, faster than my cells could catch up. As I attempt to simply maintain, my emotional stability is what takes the brunt of the punches. If I blog, if I write, it must be to help enforce discipline. I also have other... ambitions where writing is concerned and always have. More on that another time. For now, I am coming to a place in my life where I am seeking feedback and honesty from friends, loved ones and acquaintances. I'm feeling like transparency is a practice and discipline all on it's own. It is another variable in my equation. And I am truly keen on getting to my solution.
So I would be grateful always for comments and feedback if you read. I would be grateful for bonding and communion in a positive way in this medium as I attempt to rebuild the discipline of writing and just being brave in general. If I am brave, I have to put things out there and not care if anyone thinks it's stupid, cheesy or weird. Being intimidated by the negativity of others, being shy and self conscious only ever got me stuck in a rut. Being brave and bold has only every gotten me strength, love and more beauty in my life. All of my heroes were brave. They gave no fucks if they sounded dumb sometimes and when someone criticized them openly, they recognized the insecurity in the other person and proceeded forward full steam ahead no matter what. Just keep calling me crazy...
Tyson Fury, one of my new heroes says: If I wasn't crazy, I wouldn't be great.
...so cheers to that.
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