Strikes and Gutters

Summer is near....

Time. It passes quickly.

I've spent the spring feeling much like I was fighting my way out of a long-endured fog of negativity and laziness. January and February were months of breaking from a rut that I had allowed myself to exist within for too long, and the freedom initiated by that break has been powerful and illuminating.

I have, for quite some time, considered myself largely socially inept. I don't do well in groups of unfamiliar people, and I'm nowhere near "congenial" or even really "friendly". My usual approach is to watch and wait until I have a grasp of the surroundings before inserting myself within them. This was never more clear than shortly after college, when my social shortcomings bled into professional political downfall. Self-examination followed, and I decided to try to get better at being friendly.

The summer of 2005 was crucial to my development on this front - I met people who knew nothing of my past, the supposed "quality" of my collegiate and post-collegiate experiences. I was genuinely happy for once, and I remember it being a result of being myself in the simplest terms...no ambition, no fear of rebuke...it was great. It carried me for the next 18 months, as I met new people and made my way based upon who I am, instead of who I had been at varying points in my past. I continued to seek out people and experiences that were valuable in their mere existence, not because of the esteem they garnered from the world around us.

Somewhere along the line I allowed myself to become rut bound. Instead of continuing to push myself to experience new things and through personal boundaries, I found comfort in sameness. Work was good, and more secure than it has been since I left El Pomar, and somehow that lead me to shut off the engine and just put things in park. That's where the real trouble began.

I think it's because the journey is so much a part of who I am - I get so much more out of the getting from one place to another than I do out of being safe and sound. Because I robbed myself from having a journey, I made my daily comfort my enemy without really knowing it. I allowed constant negative input from people I spent a great deal of time with...and instead of removing myself from what I know to be a slippery slope for a self-confessed Ass Hole, I stayed, and chose to ignore what I was doing.

Looking back, it is luck that has saved me from my rut. I've learned through experience that choatic action often results in forward motion...and this instance is no different. Things are improving again as I get back to challenging myself, expecting more out of my days and nights. I don't have any concrete goals just yet, but I can feel them developing, becoming crisper as I shed the fog. It's exciting.

posted by Nate C @ 8:17 PM