Wanderlust

Its late and I'm at work. Times like these are when I do most of my thinking, and writing. I scribbled two little numbers while I was watching Dexter.

Scratch Paper

My mind feels like the piece of paper that a teacher gives you for the SAT. No answers. Nothing Official. Just a place to write down the process of coming to a real answer. All I have are thoughts, ideas, delusions. Fantasies. I haven't filled in any bubbles yet. I'm just working on the process. There's an unbalanced equation in my life, and I'm trying to work it out so that her and I come out on the same side. But the coefficients aren't coming out right. I better ask for more paper. And time. I'm running out of both.


I've kind of gotten a preoccupation with time lately. Maybe its the flow of where my life is going. Transition from one group of people to another. I think its that I really feel like time is running out with some very important people. That preoccupation led me to this next thing I wrote.

Tick Tock

Tick tock
Tick tock
There's no way to stop the clock.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Hold on tight to what you've got.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Got no strength, got no power.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Enjoy the days. Every hour.
Tick tock
Tick tock
No turning back. You're too deep in it.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Take in every single minute.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Watch your words. Please don't wreck it.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Soak up every little second.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Cause someday you'll run out of rhymes.
Tick tock
Tick tock
Just like you ran out of time.

As for the title, Wanderlust is a song by The Weeknd that just gets me right in the feels.

Why would you try, to waste this precious time?
Cause tonight I'll be right here.
And tomorrow you won't care.

Precious little diamond.
I give it all to you.
Precious little diamond.
Let it come to you. 

You're in love with something bigger than love.
You believe in something than trust.
Wanderlust. Wanderlust.  

Inspiration N Stuff

Hi guys.  If anyone is out there still checking up, I'm sorry I haven't been around.  Writing lost it's luster to me for quite a while.  The last time I checked in was at the beginning of 2013.  Here we are almost 4 months through 2014.  So it has been a year and some months since I dropped by to say hello.  I don't have a lot to talk about (Bullshit. I do.)  However, not all things can be said where anyone can see.  So, why don't I just tell you what I can?  Don't look at this as some "year in review" like I did last time.  That isn't the format I'm shooting for.  Instead of that, I think I will just share some thoughts, stories, and maybe an emotion or two.  This may be a long one.  Grab a drink and settle in.

Whatcha thinkin bout? Nothin, just stuff.

Sometimes I get super butthurt that not everyone in the world understands how pricelessly funny the inside jokes that my friends and I have. Let me tell you about one.  I went to see Flux Pavilion in October with my squad of friends.  We have been going to a lot of shows together since September, and it has been amazing.  Flux is my all time favorite DJ and producer, so it was really special for me to see him.  Someday I will do an entire entry regarding the magic of an EDM show, but now is not the time.  Anyway, if you have been to one, you know that it is one hell of an event.  Just a big, insane, breath-taking array of lights and sounds. Most people that I have been around for their first show describe it as "the craziest party I have ever been to." 

In the midst of this party.  This insane experience of filthy bass and enough lights to blind your mom, I look over at one of my very close friends and I'm surprised to see the most blank expression on his baffled face.  First I thought he was just enamored with the fact that the lasers just came on.  But on closer examination, I could tell that it was his thinking face.  I leaned over to ask him what he was thinking and he looked at me with a half-smile and said "Nothin, just stuff."  Being the inquisitive mind that I am, I asked him to elaborate.  In a deafening blast of music I heard him spit out an explanation that went roughly like this.  "What if it isn't all what we think it is man? Maybe this is just an alternate reality. We may not even be here. What if this is just an alternate reality?"  Woah woah woah bro.  Ease your mind a little bit.  I can't remember exactly what I said to him, but I'm sure I shrugged it off and went back to having my face melted.  

It was weeks later that him and I actually talked about what he was lost in thought about.  Alternate reality is something we have all kinda heard of.  He was thinking so far in the future that it terrified me, mainly because thinking any time past the next three months makes me scared as hell.  This guy was thinking so far in advance that at that show, he thought he wasn't even there.  Someone else was just experiencing his alternate reality in the future.  To call this guy an over-thinker would be a legendary understatement.  Having this in common with him makes us get along very well.  

If you ever ask me what I'm thinking, I will most likely smile and say "Stuff."  That's the beauty of the inside joke.  In my special little circle of people who get it, the answer is just "Stuff."  Maybe it was just the moment, maybe it is the fact that four or five people understand that I'm just thinking about stuff sometimes.  That is the humor in it for me.  

Get past the humor though.  After the giggles subside over "Hey we saw Flux and you were just standing there thinking about stuff", think about it.  In that sweaty mass of people, at that euphoric event that is called an EDM show, the stuff is still there.  Stuff can strike at any time.  It can be as crazy as pondering alternate reality, or wondering why the hell you are on earth to begin with.  No matter where you go, stuff is one deep thought away.  Stuff is anywhere your mind can take you.

"My deepest fear is that I'll be a horrible mom."

"I'm scared that I won't ever be able to give anyone 100% of my heart because I gave it all to her."

"If we opened up the first Medical Marijuana dispensary in Alabama, we would make millions in months."

"I just want to travel after graduation. I'm not sure where to work."

"There's so many what ifs I want to take care of. I'm still young."

This is all stuff.  Stuff I've heard from the people in my life recently.  This was all just a rambling, incoherent way to say that your mind will take you so many places.  I think the key is to just keep a leash on your wild mind when it comes to certain things.  But in the end, what the hell do I know about it?  My mind chewed its leash off and it isn't coming back.  

Inspiration

What's inspiration anyway? Well let's see what the nice people over at Mirriam-Websters think.  

Inspiration- something that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create.

As I said earlier, writing lost its luster for me in the last year.  I have always loved writing, and if I sat down and forced it, something would eventually come out.  Forcing it never helped anyone.  Everything I wrote for a long time was shit.  On top of already being very hard on myself when it comes to what I write, I didn't have any fire.  I had nothing of value to say.  Any intelligent or somewhat insightful thing that my mind could muster was so covered in bitterness and uncertainty that the final product was nothing that I wanted anyone to see.  I read stupid inspirational drivel online to try and spark myself up and nothing happened.  

It wouldn't be entirely true to say that I have only ever had one real inspiration to write. But I have only ever had one main inspiration.  I've been taking a hard look at losing my inspiration.  It isn't just losing a friend, someone I love, a crying shoulder.  It's losing the reason I had for writing.  The reason I had for waking up.  The reason I had to hope that the future was a time to believe in and look forward to and not a place filled with "what the fuck?" and "how did I get here?"  

I don't fancy myself a "real" writer.  I've only gotten paid to write on a few occasions.  I've won a couple lame little contests for poetry that I'm embarrassed to look at.  However, I do look at myself as a creator.  That's part of what the written word is to me.  It's a creation.  A story, poem, or blog entry is a house that I built with my thoughts and words.  If writing is like building a house, what happens when I don't have the materials to build anymore?  If I wake up and there's no more lumber for me to use, how will I build?  What happens when there are no more bricks to be stacked on each other?  

I've been drying up the resources at my main hardware store and its almost out of what I need to carry on building.  I bled my inspiration dry for so fucking long that I didn't stop to consider the fact that I can get it in every waking moment of my life.  The materials I need to build may not be at the store.  In the old days, you didn't get to go to Lowe's to get your materials.  You took an axe and an ox to the woods and brought that shit back with you.  

This isn't to say that Lowe's won't be there.  Lowe's isn't going anywhere.  But the thing about retail is that it requires currency.  The currency that I used at Lowe's is losing value with every second that ticks away. I am almost out of time.  

I think that painful reality leaves me with two choices. 

1. Tear down everything I've built and reuse the same inspiration for other creations.

2. Take an axe and an ox to the woods and bring that shit back with me.

You have to find inspiration in anything everything. 

The way the bass feels when the headliner drops it for the first time.

The way the wind blows your disk toward the hole when you thought you had a bad throw in disk golf. 

The way a stranger looks at you when you jump off their car for them.

The way the American flag looks when stretched over the outfield at Turner Field.

The deep and uncontrollable inhale when you kiss someone you love for the first time.  

The materials I need to build are everywhere.  Now it's a matter of acquiring them to build.  It is just so damn hard to go out in the woods to get the materials when I can drive past that house I already built and think "Wow, the front porch on that one is awesome. I should just make another one like that."  

I've gotten almost too deep into the analogy for me to keep track of so I know whoever is reading could be getting lost.  I'm not 100% what I am even trying to say.  I think the point I want to make is that the inspiration I had was beautiful.  It gave me a reason to breathe when all I wanted was to drown.  But my inspiration is almost out of oxygen to breathe into me.  I can spend the rest of my life gasping for it or I can realize that every living thing on this planet can breathe into me.  

Inspiration is like love because love is almost always the source of anyone's inspiration.  Love breathes life into everyone.  I can find oxygen again, but I'll always want a breath of the first love I ever had.  

In school we were always taught to conclude what we write.  Just a fancy way of the teacher wanting you to write what you've already written so she can see it in a more concise way.  I have no way to summarize what I have written.  In the last 8 weeks I have felt every human emotion from punch-drunk-love-euphoria to the deepest depths of human depression that I didn't know existed.  This entry wasn't a recap of all that.  It was just what I needed to get out about what's been going on.  I hope in some way that whoever comes across this can make it the materials they need to build something in their life.