That’s what it feels like I’m doing when I try to come up with something to write about on this here blog o’ mine – waving a cartoonishly large butterfly net around trying to snag just one of the many thoughts darting about in my head so I can harness it and thereby slow it down enough to put it to work.
Just imagine me putting a tiny harness on a protesting butterfly. Aww.
That’s the thing about my thoughts : they don’t want to be slowed down. My mind, when untethered to a real world task, works incredibly fast. That’s why sometimes it’s so hard to slow my thinking down enough to pick something and go with it.
No time to talk, I’m too busy being BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE! Yeeha!
Tricky as it be to trap one of my lively, slippery thoughts, I continue to do so every day because I can be a lot more sane if I let some of those thoughts and emotions and ideas and all the other mental entities in my brain out.
That was the whole point of this blog to begin with : to express at least some of all the crazy noise in my head so that I can concentrate.
I keep telling myself I should honestly be writing a lot more. As in spending a 9 to 5 type jobs’ worth of hours writing every day so I can see what life is like when I am getting so much more of the craziness in my head out every day.
I remember that way, way back in 2011 when I was writing my first million words and therefore was writing around 2700+ words a day, there were times when I actually felt completely calm and relaxed and okay.
Almost human, in fact.
So if I could stretch myself to that level again, or even go beyond, I might just find that this capacious noggin of mine has become a much quieter neighborhood.
My God, is that how normal people without massive megavolt minds feel all the time? No wonder they have a much easier and less complicated life than mine.
I’ve always had way, way more brain power than I knew what to do with. Perhaps if I had been born with a level of ambition commensurate with my intellect, I would have naturally plowed all that excess mental energy into achievement.
But I ain’t like that. My sister Catherine is, and I’ve seen what it gets her (hint : far) and I have also seen the toll it took on her, especially when she was young, and knew that her path was not the path for me.
Not that I am completely without ambition. I’m a dreamer and I dream high. My highest ambition would be to follow in the footsteps of my (qualified) hero Walt Disney and create a media empire whose name becomes synonymous with quality.
Disney, meet Bertrand.
But doing that via sheer hard work and determination and grit, all while being whipped by a desperate fear of failure, is never going to be for me.
I could stand to go in that direction, though. I guess it’s a matter of letting myself become motivated. I know that there’s a vast ocean of ambition within me somewhere, so it’s just a matter of tapping into it and giving it rein to drive me wherever it needs to go, or even just fuck around, just as long as I get my energies out.
I am still discovering aspects of the true toll being so stopped up inside for so long. I am already starting to feel like the previous versions of me were nothing but ghosts and illusions and that the real, substantial, embodied me is still being born.
And boy, is this birth canal long.
More after the break.
Afraid of myself
I guess, in my own way, I have allowed myself to be constrained by others.
Namely, I have been the Giant with the Head Hung Low, not just out of humility but out of not wanting to get any further from the rest of humanity than I already am.
When you’re surviving on the tiny bit of warmth that makes it through the door that your fears make you hide behind, the last thing you want to do is retreat.
No, you want to stay all snug up against that door nice and tight so you can soak up all the distant heat you can.
Kinda explains my entire life, really.
Traditional Western individualistic values would say that I should stand up, straighten up, stop worrying about spooking the pygmies at my feet, and stride forward with great purpose and intent so I can finally embrace my destiny.
Or at least get laid.
And I am not saying that would be a bad way to go. But I have a lot of emotional baggage still weighing me down that keeps such noble virility out of reach for now and instead all I can do is keep opening up in my “slow like sunrise” way and hope for that ever looming tipping point to arrive already.
I’ve been thinking a lot about inertia lately. I feel like I need to shake off all this excess inertia I have accumulated over these many years of lethargy and forget all about whatever excuses for inaction that still remain so I can cut loose from the past.
But I’m scared.
I’m always scared.
So, no sudden moves, I guess. As appealing as some big dramatic awakening seems on a cathartic level, the truth is that I have to move slowly or I risk freaking myself out and ending up scurrying back into my hole and slamming the lid shut so hard that I won’t come back out until Spring.
Sometimes dealing with my volatile and fragile state makes me feel like I am juggling nitro glycerin all damned day.
I wish I was stronger. Tougher. Manlier.
But I am what I am, no more and no less.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.