exploring

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At the risk of sounding like a TED talk circa 2010-12, I've been relabeling my working time as "exploring time," a distinction from previous iterations of I: instead of being a writer or working on a project or learning to draw, cartoon, whatever, I'm exploring writing, exploring drawing, cartooning, zine-making, what have you. Part of it is a removal of a should / must / have to aspect of my creative practice instilled in me not only by my music conservatory background (that uniquely creative form of Catholic guilt) but by viewing my practice as a means of escape for parts bigger and better and what have you. As my brief bio says, "Among other things, I write": this is my way of freeing myself to explore those other things sans guilt or have to / must / should.

a third place

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Intrigued by Oldenburg’s concept of the "third place" and cognizant that, as I've been working from home for 95% of my "career," I don't even have a second place, except The Paintshop, nevermind alone a place possessed of the communal / conversational features of Oldenburg's characteristics. Online and virtual doesn't count (in my mind). Maybe I need to work on readjusting my mindset to The Paintshop being both the second and third places? – though given that I haven't felt at home at any place save my grandparents' house on the lake and my shoebox apartment in Boston (perhaps that’s why I loved the city so much: an abundance of potential third places?), one could argue that I barely have a first place. Note that this isn't a lament, necessarily, but perhaps a framework for making my spaces feel more like a home. Added Oldenburg's book to the Kindle, as seems to be my wont for most non-fiction works of late. Food / thought, etc etc.

in

Felt it in K-12, in music (school and otherwise), in film, feel it in writing, feel it in the now: that there's a fundamental piece of something missing in my mental makeup which I've somehow managed to convince myself over these last three decades that, should I be able to figure it out, I'd be set (though I know this is probably bullshit). Maybe it's a faith in myself, a faith that I don't even have but know I haven't lived up to: these years, decades now, of spinning wheels tend to erode that faith – and make one even more stuck than before.

playacting(?)

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Effort of late being to discern the point at which my work times veer from essential aspect of myself (as my psychology prof wouldve said: breathing, sleeping, eating, shitting) to playacting: while the pre-breakfast part, from about 0445 until 0745 feels like the former, the post–, more often than not, feels like the latter. Question, then: do I stick only with the times when it's an essential aspect of myself, or do I strive to make the playacting feel as essential? Or do I roll with the playacting? Pondering, with no answer in sight, but hey if nothing else that Panama Canal scene in 3 BODY PROBLEM was all kinds of oh my fuck amazing.

internal

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Felled, by hands competent (read: neither mine nor weather): the longstanding evil chestnut tree at the back of the yard. Far better to bring it down in a controlled manner than the alternative – which, I feared, was becoming more and more likely to happen. Only big change / adjustment being that the little green shed was thrust out of the shade for the first time in 600 years, give or take, and, so I – that we might enter and retrieve various yard implements sans oxygen – had to cut a vent into the thing (read: a lopsided rectangular hole stuffed with chicken wire).

But hey, I got to play with my reciprocating saw.

Continued: a(nother) recalibration of my reasons for continuing my writing practice to being less from the external (career, being heard, etc) to the internal (because I want to – though I probably should have deeper reasons that). Tried social again and I didn't like the thought patterns it dredged up: too much reliance on the external, creation for it, unnecessary pressure. Wasted how many years of my life subjecting myself to that? No, much better to type things up here, post them, and be done.

Note: that you are presently unable to discern deeper internal reasons for continued practice may be the source of the problem. Solution: plumb the depths – or say fuck it and do whatever you want, IDK.

in

Since eliminating all long-term projects and career ambitions and switching to little short things that I release whenever I feel like it (or they feel like it), I want to spend all day tinkering on my various explorations – but don't feel like life is getting in my way when that, inevitably, doesn’t happen. First time in more than 20 years I've experienced that; a most welcome change.

purpose

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Been thinking about a piece I read (the link of which I can't find, sorry) on figuring out your purpose, or at least a purpose for a given moment in time, and, while it did include the standard "volunteer" / "shake things up" (done both), one thing it did include that the others didn't was to, paraphrased, explore old hobbies and passions. Can see that I've been doing that for awhile now: drumming, comics and action figure and antique collecting – perhaps this advice and my own exploration of it acts as a means of recognizing where I went off the path and reorienting myself to an unseen map that takes into account all the mileage accrued between then and now?

extra-corporeal perfectionism

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While I've no belief in the concept of god or in an afterlife (if I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit it – but only at my own end and probably muttering George Carlin's seven dirty words as I trip and stumble into the fire) I have, over the last few weeks, become increasingly paranoid that my dead grandfather is watching everything I do – a paranoia that's become worse since I finished The Emptying and have, for the first time since September, time to process the events of the last four months.

Backlogs suck.

Anyhow, working theory is that this is my brain creating a way to maintain its inherited and oftentimes paranoid perfectionism – as much as I adored that man, more than any other human on the planet, I will fault him (and myself) for instilling said perfectionistic streak, one bordering on pathological – in this new normal. It's my brain's way of holding on to what it knew, the prison it created for me.

Worth noting that this phenomenon didn't happen when my grandmothers (adored) nor my mother (loathed, especially by the end) died – but my bond with my grandfather was something special: as I've written before somewhere, I know I was lucky to know unconditional love for 42 years – many don't get it for 42 seconds – but that doesn't make it easy to navigate its absence. At all. I miss him terribly.

Solution: perhaps working to let go of this extra-corporeal manifestation is the first step towards living my life as it is now – which is what he would have wanted anyhow – and build it into what I've always wanted it to be (whatever that is, TBD). Trick is to figure out how to go about doing that.

It'll come to me, probably.