Friends,
Can you still call a bender a bender if there’s no drugs and alcohol involved?
This is what I’m wondering as I’m lying on the couch all night the last few days distracting myself waiting for inspiration to hit like a lightning bolt.
I want to do creative things. I have so many great ideas. I have multiple mediums to express those ideas. Yet for all the inspiration that passes through me, I have been hard-pressed to produce consistently and with follow-through.
Why?
Well for one, my default way to handle inspiration has typically been “write about it,” but I’m out of practice -I haven’t been a prolific writer the last year because I have been away from a computer while backpacking down south. I had a phone but I am loathe to type with my thumbs on a phone so got a little rusty.. That’s probably definitely (sic.) a part of it.
Another part of it is that I just moved to Berlin and my life here so far been so inter-twined with that of my girlfriend, Anne, that I really haven’t had a degree of ‘me-time’ to carve out my own space here and ease in.
One thing that I hope it is not is that I have lost something; some fire that I used to possess which made me post prolifically (often angrily) about matters I cared about. I like to think my convictions have remained consistent but my passions have been tempered with reason and patience.
Is there truth to that? Probably…yes. But I’m also at an age too where people calm down and settle and expect less from the world. I think… I KNOW I have gotten stronger in many ways over the last few years, but I can’t help but feeling I am capitulating by not being angry, or at least passionate like I used to be.
Do I expect less from the world? Do I expect less from myself? Is that appropriate?
I see myself as woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to take the world by storm. I’m not really expert at much, let alone the skills that are most rewarded by society, but fundamentally the problem is deeper than that. It’s a lack of drive because I want for something to believe in. I want something to motivate me to get me excited for each new day. Lately I have been living my life with the mindset, “How can I maximize the safety and inoffensiveness of my existence so that I can prolong my comfort for the longest period of time in the hope that the revolution materializes in the interim?” That’s no way to live and I know it’s against everything I profess to stand for but it’s also a suit that fits well.
So, what do you when the type of living that you’re against is also the type of life you’re really good at? I have perfected living frugally and within my means and managed to find happiness in that. As a student of stoic philosophy I actually think there is something noble about it, but at same time being back in a city makes me feel like I am not being all I can be because I am surrounded by so many high-achievers. It was easy for me to be a relative high-achiever living on a beach the last couple years; if you can make some flyers with an iphone app, open beers, guide people through stretching and bend wire you are a high-achiever. Berlin is a little different and I have felt that I am not really good enough at any one particular thing to make a living at it when there are a hundred other people who focus on that one thing and have become expert at it.
So I’m wondering what do I want to be good at and examining each possible thing critically. Naturally I always find reasons why I shouldn’t be focusing my time on these things. There are so many reasons NOT TO DO things and even the reasons FOR doing things can be taken apart and shown to be meaningless, pointless, self-defeating and paltry.
The only consistent, irrefutable reason TO DO anything always is that it’s inside me and I have to get it out.
I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’m right, if I’m deluding myself, and if this post even makes sense. I just wanna get back to being good and outspoken again like I used to be.
Best,
-Andre Guantanamo
Write-Errantry 