It’s been a long while since I just wrote for the sake of writing. For years, that’s what this blog was all about—tapping in to some place in me that felt alive, and then letting loose with whatever came up. There are a million reasons, I’m sure, why I’ve been keeping things somewhat bottled up. My wife and I have been separated by vast distances of time and space (due to her grad school research), and I tend not to write when wife and/or family issues are looming large. My Dad’s been sick these past months also. Mostly though, it’s just the same old story of forgetfulness—I forget how important uncensored creative expression is to me. Writing in this way is one of my key grounding practices, along with rocking out, meditation and somatics.
I’ve been through this cycle so many times—forgetting, remembering, forgetting again—that I’ve stopped beating myself up over it. Forgetting is simply part of the whole thing. At least it is for me, at this point in my life. As I type this (on the patio of the Looking Glass coffee shop in Carrboro) there are several young people—late teens, early twenties at the most—hanging out, smoking and shooting the shit. It seems strange to me to distinguish “young” people from myself, but at 38 I’m finally starting to feel the effects of aging. There’s just no denying it. I’m old enough to be these kids’ father. Fucking mind-blowing. Thursday was my father’s 65th birthday, and my good buddy Jeff’s 40th. My wife and I have been together for 8 years.
38 years old and working a temp job at the local university! Truthfully, that doesn’t bother me at all. My peers with their nice jobs and their nice houses and their nice kids don’t seem any more fulfilled than I am. No worse off, perhaps, but no better. We’re all trying to figure out what’s going on. This process of getting older, of starting to know, deep down in my bones, that it’s all fading away, is something that’s been dominating my awareness lately. It’s as if I’m interpreting everything in my life through this lens. Sounds morbid, I know, but it’s not really. It doesn’t feel that way to me at least. It seems natural that I’d be contemplating such things at this point in my life.
Wow, this “letting her rip” stuff is starting to sputter already! I’m out of practice I guess. A writer writes. A guitar player plays guitar. A passive consumer of entertainment media passively consumes entertainment media. I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying anymore. But I do miss this, and I hope I don’t forget it too soon. There something bubbling up inside me and it wants to express itself in seventeen different directions and in seventeen different ways. I want to write, I want to create music, I want to develop my Integral Health business, I want to open up in social situations, I want to learn Spanish, I want play in a rock band, I want let go of everything I think I know and see what happens.
I’m very fortunate to have the time, the comfortable lifestyle, the good health, and the supportive people in my life that make it possible for me to sit around and contemplate this shit. Today, right now, I’m not taking any of it for granted.
At least I remembered that much.
Enough coffee. Now I’m off to join my friends for some Saturday night revelry…