Liking myself

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my life and my actions and decisions and responsibilities lately, as you know if you've listened to me at all lately. I say, "listened to me" because no one has had much of a chance to do anything else with me lately. I never thought it would happen (and I bet you didn't either) but I'm actually sick of the sound of my own voice. I'm actually consiously trying to not talk and to listen more, which used to not be a chore or anything I even had to think about until I decided not to have my Saturn Return after all and just turned into a tantrum throwing, taco hurling, whining, "that's-not-fair"-ing little baby for two years.

I think last night I had a breakthrough. Not sure. It doesn't seem to have miraculously changed my life and made me a better happier person, overnight. Which was part of the breakthrough, actually. Accepting that it's just hard and that knowing more about why doesn't really help make it easier. Just easier to take. Accepting that the work is the reason. It's hard, and you have to start over every day, and you have to do all the work yourself. And the reason why you have to do it is because it's there to do. Not work, as in "career" but work as in "travail." But another part of the revelation to myself was that it can't really be explained or talked about substantively because the realization happens to you and you can't even really explain it to yourself. Another significant part was the idea that being a happy and successful adult is largely impulse control, which I'm pretty sure I learned from Clarice Starling, years ago, but which really hit me during this whole "sense of significance" experience I'm talking about. That maturity and responsibility aren't magical keys that you find at a pre-arranged point in the video game. That taking control of your life isn't anything anyone else can help you do, by definition. That you get out of life what you put in, and that every moment is simultaneously important, precious, insignificant, and fleeting. That our behavior is a contract we write with the world, determining every effect of our experience. The killer part is that I already knew all these things. I've said them to numerous people. Ad nauseam. I even believed some of them to be true, but last night it was as if I had been describing giraffes to everyone from a third-hand description of one and then woke up to one in my room. Again I can't really explain how or why.

Not that any of it will mean anything to anyone but me, since we are talking about chemical fires inside my own uniquely coiled head-meat, but what the hell. I need to spitball about it a little so I won't monologue and short-circuit my growth by being forced to cut out my own tongue. Besides, noboby reads this blog anymore because I never post, so it's almost like those things we used to have way back when. You know...it's like a book...but with no words in it...and you put words...a diary! I tried to keep a diary for years but I just wasn't getting enough attention. God bless pornography for inventing the internet.

Anyway, so I'll be working on that. I fucked up my timesheets at work and won't get a check for a month, because the one for the next two weeks will come out with the one I get after that. Assuming I don't fuck up those timesheets. I finally got my drivers' license renewed/replaced and changed my address on it. I finally went down to the courthouse to show them my insurance papers (which they wouldn't accept without my DL) and get the deferment so I only have to pay half of that ticket, so I only owe the city another $250 or so. I'm thinking about looking for another job. I feel pretty. I need to gut this blog and make it nice again, and decide what to do about the "two blogs" issue. Not enough time or energy to write unique posts for both, not really enough time or energy to duplicate posts. Hmmmm. Don't know. (Actually I have four blogs, but I never post on the other two. I just needed them, back when I got the blogging bug.

The thing that made me think what I felt last night was a real breakthrough in my thinking, that it honestly meant something, is that I've had momentary glimpses of the feeling it gave me, throughout my life. It felt kind of...I can't explain it. But it never felt like it had as much content as it felt it had this time. Like I was knowing something deep for the first time. Or the latest time, however you want to view it. Sci-fi author Connie Willis, in her excellent book Passage, writes something along the lines of, "just because you really, really want something to be true, that doesn't make it true. But just because you really, really want something to be true, doesn't make it not possible." I really, really want to believe that I'll give myself this feeling more often. That I'll learn to carry carefully this precious thing inside my chest and live a life that honors it. That I'll teach myself to live fully and with zest, full of awe and love.