musing, but not a-

Sitting here sitting in front of the proverbial blank white page. What to write. What to say. What to think and how to think it. How to change thoughts to action. How to step over, through, around the artificial barriers and fucking MOVE. Forward. Sideways. Maybe backward. Inaction is the enemy.

Internally, building pressure. Rivets straining, beads of condensation rolling down the skin. A moment of explosion comes. Will it be destruction or creation?

Why wait on it? Why not hit the button and blow the shit up?

I never wanted this blog to be about my brain problems. My failings to launch. It always comes back to that, some galactic apology to the world for not living up. To you, whom I don’t even know. To my friends, family. To my wife and daughter.

The fear of failure breathes failure into being.

It all sounds so melodramatic this way, typing it out, putting it out there. And yet, it’s smaller than the accompanying emotions. Inside, they aren’t cries of quiet desperation. They’re throat-tearing roars. But the surface is calm. Mostly.

I guess you do have to hit rock bottom to change. You have to be desperate. You have to unlearn behaviors, thought patterns. The brain is the enemy. It wants you to stay, even if you’re miserable because it understands where it is and what’s going on. It understands the threats.

It lies. Always.

“Barriers.” The word was said to me yesterday. I think it was said because I wasn’t thinking along the same path as the sayer, but it made me think about the word, and then the word became a question, which became a thought process.

Every time I hear something that’s not in line with my preconception, I say, “No.” I always come back around to it, but my instinct is the negative, and that’s from fear. My gut reaction is one of fear and safety.

Our brains are hardwired for fight-or-flight. They are meant to keep us safe from all threats. Most of our environmental stressors in modern day ‘Merica aren’t life-or-death, however. But our brains don’t know that. Most can mitigate that. Those of us with anxiety disorders have a bit more trouble. Fighting the irrationality isn’t as simple as saying, “shut up, brain.”

Which is to say, I don’t mean to put up barriers to my “success.” It’s like a mental Spartan Race, with obstacles to fight through as standard operating procedure. Some of those take more training to overcome than others.

This is a bunch of metaphorical bullshit. The short version: change is fucking hard, even if you really want it. I think you may have to resort to mental chicanery.