Posts tagged with "change"

consider this place

It’s get­ting hard­er to write.

Not that the spir­it is unwill­ing, although that was the case for years, when the things I need­ed to talk about most were the exact things I need­ed dis­tance from. At this point, the flesh isn’t even that weak1, but a lack of cer­tain­ty in which to ground my per­spec­tives has become an obsta­cle. The biggest sign I’m get­ting old­er isn’t the white hair in my mous­tache, but the recog­ni­tion that I’ve shed some youth­ful arro­gance that used to feel like wis­dom.

FTL: Faster Than Light decision

Do I let fate reward my brav­ery with an extra crew mem­ber, or give it the chance to fuck me over by killing one? Or do I avoid the choice com­plete­ly?

It’s eas­i­er for me to accept a bad out­come if I remem­ber that every deci­sion is made with the best inten­tions, and the only goal is sur­vival.

HBO shows2 and games with con­se­quen­tial choic­es based on ran­dom­ized events3 have been a huge influ­ence on my think­ing. Media with mosaics of moral­i­ty, while char­ac­ters grow and evolve across sev­er­al spec­trums (along with my opin­ion of them). Where deci­sions have to be care­ful­ly made with lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion and resources, then bal­anced against com­pet­ing inter­ests from for­eign spheres of influ­ence. Situations where a per­son can make all the right moves, and still fail through cir­cum­stance.

Continue read­ing “con­sid­er this place”…

  1. Thanks to a remis­sion in col­i­tis, and con­sis­tent use of a SAD lamp. [↩]
  2. Game of Thrones, Six Feet Under [↩]
  3. Europa Universalis 4, FTL: Faster Than Light, Moirai [↩]

sailing through the changing ocean tides

It’s in these sto­ries, these moments, these con­nec­tions, these words, these images, these har­monies, these delight­ful chilly breezes that fore­tell the com­ing of win­ter where I find a part myself lost for so long.

child sucking her thumb

A gen­er­al sense of numb­ness filled my life, but I’m start­ing to feel again, some­thing I’ve been need­ing for a while now. It was as if I’d lost a sense of pur­pose, and I could­n’t fig­ure out how to fix that cause I could­n’t tell what was wrong.

Maybe the fact that I start­ed taper­ing off my dose of Cipralex (a few months ahead of sched­ule) is adding to the effect. It’s hard to tell with every­thing all mixed up, and so much hap­pen­ing at once.

I can’t imag­ine what things will be like in a few weeks, let alone a year. There’s nev­er been so much uncer­tain­ty in my life, but that does­n’t scare me any­more. There’s always a way out. Ironic that I had to lose every­thing to learn that.

what fool hath added water to the sea?

O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall dis­til from these two ancient urns,
Than youth­ful April shall with all his show­ers

—Titus Andronicus

I lost my life as I knew it, piece by piece, over days and weeks and months. Now things will nev­er be the same. In moments of cri­sis, every­thing has been dis­tilled; what’s gone is gone for­ev­er, and what remains is what I will car­ry for the rest of my life.

And as the threads unrav­eled, I tore myself from the world away, my face unable to bear the bur­den to oth­ers.

it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

I got what I want­ed for Christmas.

Piles of it. Sheets falling from the sky, melt­ing instant­ly on your wind­shield, forc­ing the traf­fic to 20kph on the high­way. So much that you have to brush off your car if you leave it parked for more than a minute, but the sky glows orange for you to savour every sec­ond.

house in the snow

Not that I cel­e­brate Christmas, but I do enjoy the trap­pings of the sea­son. The lights and the dec­o­ra­tions and the spir­it and the snow. I’m just sick of the con­sumerism. It seems per­verse to see all this fan­cy paper wrapped around a box only to be torn off and thrown away. To see peo­ple scram­bling to buy things just to have some­thing to give. I’ve got it just right, where I don’t exchange gifts with any of my friends cause I don’t want either side to feel oblig­ed. I’d rather give a present when the time is right for both peo­ple, and save my mon­ey so it’s some­thing spe­cial every now and then. The last thing I want is to be a scrooge, but the old­er I get, the more I feel like that’s what I’m turn­ing into.

The hol­i­days are the only time I tru­ly veg out. I watch more TV on Christmas day than in the entire year com­bined, marathon reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars and Cake Boss. Shows that are fas­ci­nat­ing in short bursts with the right com­pa­ny and snacks, but nev­er good enough to make a point to watch on my own.

trees and night

I was lucky enough to spend some qual­i­ty time with a cheap elec­tric gui­tar. The body was dusty, the strings were dirty, and the into­na­tion left some­thing to be desired, but the action had me feel­ing like all the time I’ve spent with a stiff steel-string acoustic has paid off. About a month ago I put down a $200 deposit on the nylon-string beau­ty I’ve always want­ed (with the promise that I’d get my deposit back if I did­n’t like it) so I could wrap my arms around the body, run my hands across the glossy fin­ish, and feel the fret­board beneath my fin­gers. Guitar has been my only ther­a­py late­ly. The only thing I can throw myself into and for­get about every­thing else, the only part of myself that I can tan­gi­bly tell is improv­ing, some­thing I need to be feel­ing right now.

I’ve nev­er been this uncer­tain about the future, and it’s freak­ing me out. I already had a feel­ing 2012 was going to be a new start. My projects would be done by the end of the year, I’d have a nice lit­tle break, and I’d be ready to begin again. Now I’m forced into that real­i­ty, and life is soon going to be very dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if I’ll be able to han­dle it, but I sus­pect I won’t have much of a choice.

What To Accept?

They always say time changes things, but you actu­al­ly have to change them your­self.

—Andy Warhol

Many of my rela­tion­ships, roman­tic or oth­er­wise, are often approached, at least par­tial­ly, based on the hope that the oth­er per­son will change. This change can take the form of some­thing as sim­ple as prompt­ness, as frus­trat­ing as tidi­ness, or as grand as self-cen­tered­ness.

Change, syn­ony­mous with improve­ment, has been the basis of my life. It takes a self-aware­ness of my faults, com­bined with a desire to change these faults, to improve. Assuming that oth­ers are the same way has been one of the biggest mis­takes I’ve ever made. When the veil is lift­ed, and I real­ize that some­one is stuck in their per­son­al­i­ty, I lose my faith in human­i­ty. For the frac­tion of peo­ple who are con­scious enough to know that they need to change, (and I mean this in an absolute sense, where almost any­one would agree that some­thing needs improve­ment, such as tem­per or closed-mind­ed­ness) only a frac­tion of those are actu­al­ly able to do so.

It’s not that some peo­ple have willpow­er and some don’t. It’s that some peo­ple are ready to change and oth­ers are not.

This means that when I meet some­one, I either have to accept or reject them for who they are, because that’s most like­ly who they’re going to be for the rest of their lives. I have to stop accept­ing some­one based on the hope that they will get bet­ter.

Acceptance, which has always been a dif­fi­cult thing for me, thus becomes the most impor­tant thing in my rela­tion­ships. It also remains one of the most hard­est things for me to change.

So should I learn to accept this about myself, the way I should learn to accept things of oth­ers?