Today, I am going to talk about inner conflict, because I have a hell of a fight going on inside me lately.

It is the old energy versus inertia problem that I have always had and that is probably at the root of most of my problems. After all, all that anxiety and fear and craziness in my head has to gets its energy somewhere.

And for a long time now, I have figured that “somewhere” to be all the energy that my powerful mind puts out but which doesn’t go anywhere. It gets stuck at the enormous depressive clog made of ice and fear in my soul and instead of pouring out into the world in the form of action and expression, it just backs up back into my mind and produces this massive electrical charge that expresses itself as mental chaos.

For a long time, that was simply the way things were. I stayed all wrapped up in myself, trying to shut out the world and disappear into my toys, and thought that because my mind was free, I was free.

Like hell. I was more a slave in a cage than any pig-ignorant bumpkin who thinks Obama is a gay Muslim socialist fascist. It does not matter if your mind can fly as free as a bird if said bird has a sixteen ton weight tied to its tail.

And so it went for far too many years of my life. After I moved out of Angela’s place and into the apartment I live in now, it became all too easy not to have to deal with the world at all.

So I have been in somewhat of a slump for a long time. And things have only gotten worse since last November. Last year, I was doing a video and a blog entry a day, and doing fine that way.

But now, I blog, and that’s it. And that is not good. Not that I have some sort of obligation or compulsion to do more, but this blog of mine does not absorb enough of my creative energies to keep me calm. In fact, lately writing this blog entry has felt really easy for me. I guess that means I have gotten back into shape, writing wise. This little outlet of mine does me a lot of good, but it is feeling increasingly like a warm-up, not a routine.

This would naturally lead to finding something else to do with my day, and it is not like I don’t have lots of exciting and fruitful possibilities. I could start a new book, or try to pin down some of my short story ideas long enough to write the damned thing, or go back to making videos, maybe with my tablet this time (better quality), or start up a wacky fake news website like I have been planning to do forever, or yadda yadda yadda,

So I have a lot of neato things I could totally do. But I am stuck at the end of the diving board, scared to dive even though I know the water is only a few feet below.

Thus, I am feeling the conflict big time, and it is a very hard thing to resolve. I need an inner conflict resolution expert. My inner self wants to emerge and shine and release all that latent power into the world in the form of wonderful, witty, wacky, warm works of art.

But there is still this barrier within me, the little boy who can’t jump, and that terrible fear that makes me cling to stasis as the only way to keep my demons quiet hold me back.

Hell, it holds me down. I really feel like I am holding my own head under water lately. I used to feel this sort of thing as me staring at myself, unblinking, and holding myself in place that way. Frozen by the light.

But now it feels a lot more like a hand on the back of my head, pushing me down, squashing me into place, keeping me from lifting my head and looking around at the world.

This is the point in the battle for my soul when the skirmishes stop and the war begins. I wish I knew a better way. I am conflict avoidant by nature, preferring to stick with the smooth and mellow groove. I don’t dig the harshness.

And part of me keeps trying to find a diplomatic solution. Something that balances the ambition and the fear and lets them find a third way out of the conflict and into cooperation with each other.

Problem is, that inner barrier has to go. That is not negotiable. That wall inside of me, the wall that has both been keeping me in and keeping the world out, has to be destroyed. Perhaps a new, more flexible, more nuanced barrier will replace it eventually, but for now, the old wall has to come down like the walls of Jericho.

Only when I can let the world in and let myself out can I find a more healthy equilibrium. I will always be an introvert. I will always need serious alone time to recharge after social engagement. I will always seek the quiet spaces where I can do my quiet activities in peace. I will never be someone who is a social whirlwind.

But I need to move in that direction. Let some fresh air into my soul and clear out all the junk cluttering up my mind. Get rid of old thought patterns in favour of new, optimized ones. Patch myself into Fru 2.0 already.

As always, though, the real issue is patience, and faith. The patience to wait for this long damned process to work itself out, and the faith that all of this is, actually, leading somewhere.

Turns out, the war within will not be short or decisive, and will in fact be something of a quagmire.

And here I thought we’d be greeted as liberators.

See you tomorrow, folks!