April

Playing..., originally uploaded by Blue I'x.

I had a good weekend. Got to tag along on a fun photoshoot, went to the farmer's market, and bought a drawing tablet.

I've been wanting a drawing tablet for some time, hoping I can combine drawing with my photography - that's the idea, anyway. I don't have any sort of handle on photoshop to begin with, though - so the learning curve is steep. I have ideas, inspirations, but no knowledge on how to carry them out.

Not to mention energy. I'm feeling incredibly drained, for unknown reasons. I spend all day at work imagining all the beautiful things I'll create when I get home and then by the time I get home I just want to curl up in a little ball and sleep.

I'm having a lot of trouble lately knowing how to live, what to do. How do people decide what to do in their every day lives? We work most of the time, and we can't all have jobs that make our hearts flutter with passion... Can we?

I don't even know what I feel like I should do for a living. I have brainstorms, but they're all SO impractical. Where is that balance found? How do people do it?

I feel like the message lately is to be brave and step outside comfort in order to grow. But when I really think about it, it would be completely stupid of me to change what I do. Not without some reason, some catalyst. But then - could that be seen as me sitting around waiting for opportunity to knock?

How important is it that we let go of our securities in order to thrive? I feel like I've spent my entire adult life trying to be more and more secure in every way - and suddenly the universe is telling me it's all a waste, and I should be stupid and crazy like I wasn't when I was 21?

I don't want to be 21 again. I don't want to party all the time. There's so much about that time that I'm sooo happy to leave behind forever. But the freedom - There was a freedom I had access to, that I refused to take advantage of. I just wanted to be safe, and secure.

Now I spend so much of my life wondering where I would have been - WHO I would have been, if I'd made different choices. If I'd stayed in school and become a teacher. If I'd gone to art school, if I'd traveled on my own, if I'd run away to some place where I knew no one and worked in a little bookstore and lived in a teeny apartment above a cafe.

I know those people don't exist. There's no reason for them to exist. I didn't make those choices, I stayed safe. And there were perks to the choices I made. There were honest and logical reasons I made those decisions, and they were best at the time. And we can only really make decisions based on what we know right now.

So when do we know that it's time to turn everything upside down and try something NEW?

And when we do decide that, and work up the courage and the plan, and make these scary things happen in our lives, how do we know we're doing it for the right reasons? How do we know we're not just running away from things we should be facing?

And the truth, I know, is that we don't know. None of us knows what will or will not happen. We can't know. There's no such thing as black and white. But we have to be brave, and try.

But if I know this (and I'm pretty sure I do), how come all I ever want to do is hide? It's always my first choice. Avoid conflict, remove myself from it, hide. Put up my little walls, and wait for everything to just blow over. Deal with my own hurt and anger and sadness, and let everything external just sort itself out.

I do small things every day that I hope will point me in the right direction. I force myself to be brave about little things. I leave my mind as open and willing as possible, though I have to wonder if living the same days over and over again for years and years and years can even leave you with the option of being truly open-minded.

I've been falling asleep all day, craving my bed so badly. Now it's 11pm, and I suddenly feel wide awake. Isn't that the way it goes? What is it that is so screwed up about my body's clock, that it's always SO tired when it needs to be awake, and gets this burst of energy just as it should be winding down?

Anywho, in accordance with my endless attempt to train my body to behave like it should, I'm going to bed now. Nightmares are pretty-much the norm these days, so I'll wake up distant or worried or afraid, force strength on myself at some point before leaving the house, and face another day, like countless others I've already finished.

And I hope my next post is a little more cheery. Sometimes I piss myself off with the tone of these things, but once I start typing, I don't control it, it just emerges.