Well…. so…. here’s the thing. After an 18 year silence, I’m getting on this dumb waste of money to announce that I’m no longer living out on the edge of nowhere. In other words, the literal part of the “exile” thing is basically over. I moved back into some semblance of where the action is. I guess. I don’t feel as lightened and energized as I’d expected to feel and so far the benefits are mild. Basically my commute is shorter, and it’s easier to get to things people want me to get to. Which is good when it happens, mostly because my drive to get out and do shit (incidentally, I had a drive to get out and do shit once upon a time) has petered out.
These days, what used to pass for ambition, or spirit, or goals, or passion, or even interest has fizzled. I blame being in a long term relationship. Those things are notorious killers of spark. At least for me they seem to be. Maybe? Or is it a long lifetime of focusing on my deficiencies? Resentment at being without real problems? I don’t even know what to blame this apathy on. And it seems important to find some phenomenon to blame. Some state of affairs to be dissatisfied by. Like once you know why, then you move to ACTION.
But doesn’t it always actually boil down to action being the answer? Take this example. When I sold my apartment in the hinterlands, I had all my shit stuffed into a storage room, for which I pay a modest monthly fee (it’s expensive). When I moved in with the old lady, the moving company was just too pathetically wimpy to manage 2 households’ worth of shit in one day, so half my shit stayed in storage.
Some of my best shit is still in there. Like I got this crazy sharp chef’s knife one Christmas–it’s in a box marked kitchen. TWO bikes and a microwave! But more importantly, my printer–in a box marked printer–is still lounging away in there. Forget that our new apartment just has no room for fucking anything, you need a printer. Why don’t I go get it? I don’t know. Every time I think about the trip over there (a whopping 10 minutes away) I just go fuzzy-brained and listless, and that’s the end of that.
Where’s this lack of action coming from? How do I address the source of my reluctance? Does it mean I don’t really want to be living with my gal (I mean duh), and that some part of my subconscious is fighting to keep my independence in the usual self-sabotaging ways I’ve developed since childhood? Does the trip to the storage place remind me too viciously of the most fertile time of my life, my mid 20s when I was in and out of storage practically every year, hobnobbing with amazing people, all while dreaming big dreams but never quite connecting with them? Or how the last time I visited my folks we took a trip to their storage place and culled all my most precious mementos from ages 2-15?
Answer: just go get the fucking printer. And that sweet knife. The end. Solved. See how it works out?
So that’s my struggle, now that I don’t have the albatross of geographic exile to lean into. How to realize my best most exciting and fulfilling life. Basically all the real problems have vanished, if there ever really were any. Granted, i still don’t get home from work until 8, and I’m too tired to do anything with that time other than make dinner. And my gal has had a hefty bout of cancer, and will again, as has her mother. And we’re both biological clocks ticking down down down the baby slide. But none of that should stop anything from being done. My real problems are in my head, but I think the solution to them is so easy, I probably won’t ever embrace it. And it kills me that it’s a Nike slogan. We’ll see!
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! :)