On Fear and Heat and Me

I am 27 now. I believe I'm very scared. The dream has always been to write and be good at it. Indeed the idea is to journey inward for a living. But along this path I have come across some insidious obstacles. One is the forced slumber that accompanies any contemplation on the matter of this discipline. Even now I am battling to stay awake. I shake my head like a mad man. I breathe hard to keep going. But at the center of my forehead I feel an amazing weight that droops onto my eyelids and makes my arms sag and my eyes roll back. The obstacle isn't circumstantial. It's something on the inside and it is most terrible in its persuasion. After another long stretch I've returned to battle it again.

Break.

I started that around 8pm. It's now 2am. I had to lay down.

I don't know what it is. I can spend 12 hours straight in front of a TV catching up on a good show or playing a video game straight through to completion. But this one practice; an effort of my love of life, of humanity, and the future, the golden ticket not to prosperity but at least happiness - my real soul investment in this world - and I fall asleep!

But at least temporarily I'm awake. The heat of the summer has woken me up in a sweat. I'm angry. I want more than nothing to turn the tables and mount an incredible response to save my own life.

Things happen. I'm living with my mom again. I'll be turning 28 in a little over a month. It's tough on the ego to have to start over but in contrast to the man I was becoming, I suppose it was necessary. I was believing that unhappiness was a mark of duty and that doing your duty could be your greatest sign of valor, of consideration and integrity and respect for life and circumstances and the random. However the alternative consideration is that it's perhaps all true but that the duty must be to oneself, not to the image afforded by others of uncontrollable intent.

I loathe to do harm. I only want to protect, preserve, and uplift. However that desire has made my heart and mind shrivel and it is a sad irony to value strength but never attain it in your justification for sacrifice.

By no means am I a saint. I should probably clarify that. And talking in generalities wouldn't help the average reader understand. I'm not yet ready to be frank except on this issue: I am supposed to write and write a lot at that. I haven't been doing that. It has presented a painful surface to break through each time, like skin healed over a wound improperly that must be torn and redressed to stop an infection (if that even happens).

The process of willpower is thought - choice - attempt. It's this muscle I need to grow and I can't afford to have some weird chemical process get in the way. I am seeking now the industry within me. I am an American. There is a lot of wrong to right here, there are a lot of advantages I have ignored, there is a legacy that is my responsibility to construct and time . . . I guess time is only an aid in its coldness; its unrelenting hunt. Perhaps that is the nature of discipline, to match the discipline of time's passing, to keep us alert to our mortality and to make the brave leaps that much more heroic.