A Voyage Begins
/I am entering an entirely new chapter in my life and while it is wildly exciting it is also wildly terrifying. For years I have talked about the things I want to do, the things I am; a writer, a poet, a creative, and the things I have planned for the future but I was doing very little about them. I wasn’t really doing much in the way of making these things come about in any tangible sense. This sounds pretty lazy until you start to realize that this is pretty much the universally accepted approach to how to live your best life.
Nearly everyone does some version of this. Who doesn’t have some version of a dream board they created with the best of intentions just shamefully collecting dust somewhere? We all think about these things from time to time and silently comfort ourselves that while we never got around to developing our million dollar idea into a reality or writing that autobiography we just know we have the bones of, we know deep in the leather captains chair of our hearts no one else at that pumped up workshop did either.
Most people are secretly fine with this. I don’t blame them one tiny bit. Really I don’t. The thoughts that keep the average person awake at night mostly have to do with keeping the bills paid and the family fed. (I’ve read studies.) That in and of itself makes the fact that people get up and go about their days living lives of quiet victory amazing. Seriously I make it a point to never judge another person’s soul if I can help it. You’ve got your thing. I’ve got my thing. Live and let live, that’s the way to be. We don’t live in the same reality anyway so how can I really critique your choices?
I’m just trying to build context mind. These are sweeping generalities, the absolute worst kind. A sloppy jumping off point just to get the ball rolling. I’m just trying to establish some rocky common ground. I’m sure some of you are nodding thoughtfully and others are frowning and tut-tutting at my lack of contextual analysis but this is just a simple point. I’m saving my philosophical arguments on the nature of mankind's ambition for later.
I’m trying to talk about myself and that’s a subject so shallow you can barely dip your baby toe in it. How much sociology could you reasonably expect? No, today the grand undertaking is not about the rest of the human race but my own little journey. I think that has been more of a saunter at times.
After much sitting around and meandering pointlessly I decided talking about things wasn’t really accomplishing much. I’ve made halfhearted stabs at being my best self (TM) before now but as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now my results have been less of a killing spree and more of a quiet assault. Those stabs just never really got me anywhere serious. Well I’m back and I’m trying again and really planning to massacre this whole life business.
I don’t live in the rest of the world as other people. I’ve noticed that more fully as time has gone on. I fought that realization for a few years and then just decided to go with it. Struggling with it just wasn’t realigning me with the perception of others and was making me feel more adrift and strange, not less.
My reality is rich with color and vivid with experience. Texture and sound are nuanced and dynamic over here. Whole universes of peoples and times seem to flow by untouched by what the rest of you can perceive and touch. There have been a few points in books and movies about what can happen to a person when society shares a different point of view from your own. You are perceived are the mad man howling at an uncaring moon. If, however, the majority were to suddenly share your unconventional point of view then those rare naysayers still clinging to the more pedestrian view of reality would be condemned as dangerous lunatics. Comforting isn't it?
When I invite others into my pocket reality this is precisely what I am doing. Offering up a taste of the rarefied ether of the views and dimensions I call home. I suppose I should clarify I am not implying I am an alien come from some new planet or a wearer of a tin foil hat raving about the government adding chemicals in our water supply to make us not see ghosts. I’m just offering you a simple apple. No harm in a little taste of a different viewpoint is there? A little glimpse into another way of looking at things.
A story here, a poem there… A video now and again. I hope you like what I show you. I’ve been waiting a long time to share these things. Some of them might not be as pretty or polished as others and I’ll not claim to be a saint. Nor will you ever see me boast at being the best nor the brightest. I am mortal and very fallible after all. But isn’t that what makes this fun?
This is simply sharing. I want to share some things with you. Things I say and do and think. Perhaps you will, in time, want to share some things with me. Maybe this will end up not just being a window into my reality but a doorway to many such worlds. We could taste them together. Open all the doors and ways wide and see them for what they are.
We all carry our own private space with us. It’s made of our own world shaped by our own self. Mine is just more colorful and strange. So come on in, the water is fine. Full of monsters but swimming in a new sea always has it’s attendant risks and you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t leave sight of land.
Be brave, intrepid traveler. Be bold and fierce and wild. Such vistas I shall show you!