How to Spend Time You’ve Gained Back

Time: 00:29 (It’s still Sunday in California).
Location: Home

I have a variety of reactions when it comes to loss, falling in at least four different parts of a spectrum ranging from gracious acceptance to near complete disbelief fueled by self loathing. Lately, I have found when these things deal with the heart, the rejection that hurts the most stems from neglect.

It’s easier when the writing is on the wall very early on in the courtship. I clearly have nothing in common with you, our deep rooted opinions are polar opposites, our lifestyles do not intersect at all.

But give me enough time and I’ll find an excuse for any flags that pop up. You could ditch me, ignore me, flake on me. When my interest has been peaked it’s difficult for me to proactively shut off. Part of that has to do with watching Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1, or Kathryn Janeway and Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager deny their romantic interests in each other for 8 years for “the good of the planet” or “the good of the crew” instead of just trying to have it all.

In every instance except that one instance last November, I would honestly just run everything into the ground rather than have me be the one to abandon ship. It never occurred to me that there was any other alternative except seeing things through to the end. In life, everything except love had the expectation of coming easy. If it didn’t, then it wasn’t for me.

How that has shaped my expectations of love and also disciplined hobbies like writing, music editing, or climbing is painfully clear as I sit here in my bed feeling frustrated, confused, and dejected.

I would rather give my trust and heart and effort to people instead of myself. My own work. My own happiness. I understand how to be alone, how to succeed, how to find fulfillment in my friends. I do it well most of the time.

But when you rank the effort — how much more I’m willing to go for someone I’ve found interest in versus how I feel spending time at the gym or reading to strengthen my work, or writing to hone my voice and vision — I would rather invest more time in love. In college I turned myself into what I imagined was a universal ideal catch. Post college I did everything I could to be communicative of what I wanted and understanding/flexible to what someone else was looking for. I am more easily invested in entanglements with men than my own growth as a rock climber or creative.

I can love someone and treat someone very well — likely better than anyone else can. I feel this with so much conviction. Conviction I could use to become a better writer, a better climber.

My disciplines are inhibited before they even begin with the thought that if I don’t monetize this, if I am not actually the best in this, what’s the goddamn point?

The point is it makes me happy.

Mentorship and collaboration, problem solving with limited resources, organizing data into a story, exercising my understanding of human behavior with depth and empathy, growing my insight into the profound impact of digital technology in relation to our personal values and overall society. Meeting new people, making new friends.

These thing make me happy. But the process of getting through the tasks within areas that are under my control seem somehow less attainable than the areas that are entirely dependent on the whims and emotions of other people.

I said at first that I would keep this short and sweet. But since I’ve lost access to my tumblr, my final link to the past 9 years of my life (since I’d lost my instagram) I’ve been trying to figure out why the fuck this has happened again.

The only explanation seems to be that I’m convinced my habits of pandering in nostalgia are destroying my mental wellbeing. That I can’t treat my life the way that I treat writing a novel or analyzing a TV show. There are ties that bind; the choices I make and the environments I find myself in will affect my future.

Who I will become is not written in my past but in the fleeting present. I have a moment. I have time. I am not a boron electron floating around in potential spaces, the ghost of my past or future as the only trace elements available for quantification. I can feel my present. I hear it slipping away in the podcasts that I stream or the music that embraces my eardrums.

It’s funny how none of the things I invest in now will show immediate benefits. Nothing in this life shows immediate benefits. Even this article is a progression of words stroked out of my hands on to a keyboard and into the internet over a course of time; the idea being that you do something over and over again and eventually you gain muscle memory and/or the ability to optimize that process into complete and total efficiency.

And yet here I am like every other quarter life adult child ranting in public fashion tucked into bed at 1AM on an especially broody Sunday.

I’m fucking tired. I am so fucking tired and I don’t know how to spend my time trying to build a steady relationship and work on my craft. I always imagined that I would never be as dense as Sam or Kathryn when it came to finding balance between love and duty.

I think this is all just frustrating because back in November I told myself I wasn’t even going to try anymore. For real now, I’m fucking done.

I’d rather be alone doing nothing than spending any more time following people down roads that lead to nowhere.

Let me dig my own holes and learn what I can out of gluing my hands together in my own crafts. Not for anything. Not for any idea that “it comes when you least expect it” or that “it comes when you stop trying.”

I don’t even want it anymore.