Fatal Distraction

Obsessive.  Perhaps not compulsive, but most definitely obsessive.   This is the greeting I give the man in the mirror on the now infrequent occasion that I am motivated to shave my face clean of its stubble.  I know I can’t hide forever.  Eventually the itching will become unbearable and I will have to come face to face with my reflection.  Don’t be misled, I am still a long way from Glen Close(ing) the family bunny into the cook pot, but I feel afflicted none the less.  I have read three novels in as many days.  I have taken to paintings that have been sitting untouched for days and am in the process of finishing several blog posts that need publishing.  The thoughts race around my head in an uncomfortable tropical storm that will spin itself into a full blown mental hurricane if I let it.  I have written three fictional novels inside my head and the one that is currently on paper is getting a re-write in the first person.  Not that I am abandoning the purely narrative account.  I have decided to write it TWICE.  I think perhaps it is a flaw in my DNA.  Something passed down.  I have seen this type of mania before.  This is the reverse side of the coin I spoke of in my last entry.  This is the influence of my father and perhaps his father before him.  A rolling stone gathers no moss indeed.  I have weighed my anchor and gathered the winds in my sails.  IN doing so, it seems I have over corrected and found myself lost in a sea of creativity.  Breakthroughs and epiphanies seem to attack me even in my sleep.  It is only now that I realize that the transformation is complete.  I am an artist.  Unstable, eccentric and fantastic.  Yet somehow, I know I must find a way toward the middle ground for my families sake.  Surely the children wouldn’t understand their father racing around the house in a bathrobe caked with paint and modeling clay, a bow tie and a beard longer than the fellas in ZZ Top.  And so, as I began obsessively searching through Amazon’s database of literature I fell upon a series of books by A.J. Jacobs it hit me.  Smudging my greasy fingertips as I perversely perused through titles on my wife’s Kindle I read through a few of sample of this author’s works.  Almost immediately I threw the device on my bed and ran from my room in terror.

There it was, it black and white.  OBSESSION.  I know that like a moth to the flame I will return to these works, but for the time being, I dare not give in to the want for solitude and the siren song that is calling me forth.  I remind myself of the lyrics of a song that has been played to exhaustion on my ipod as of late:  “It’s hard to lay a golden egg when everyone’s around . . . It’s hard to stay inside my head when words keep pouring out.”  The answer is clear.  Avoid solitude, but how?  I carry these things around in my head and absent the assistance of a guillotine I see no way to separate myself from my ability to retreat into the recesses of my brain.  I once told my wife something that I think she failed to understand and in some way scared her a bit.  I told her that I feel as if I live two lives.  My days are divided into the internal and the external.  I guess you would call it the very advanced stages of multi-tasking.  There is the day and the reality that the world sees when they encounter me on the street, going about my daily routine.  Then there is the day that occurs within.  The stories that are written.  The thoughts that are hashed and re-hashed but never discarded.  The conversations I have with myself about my profound thoughts that many wouldn’t find all that interesting.  It is often these things that find themselves written in these pages.

There is a cold reality to face here.  I have become a bore, the natural consequence of writing your every thought for the world to see.  I find that I no longer have anything meaningful to add to dinner conversation.  Even though the odds are great that my company would not have read my writings, I don’t necessarily feel compelled to repeat myself.  And so I remain silent.  The last thing I want is to be the old man that keeps repeating the same tired story over and over again because his short term memory is so terrible that all he can remember is the past.  In my recent posts, in fact, I swore off any acknowledgement of nostalgia and so I am forced to look forward for new things to discuss.  This makes for long and uncomfortable pauses over a plate of goose liver when as mind races for fresh banter.  In reality though, this isn’t all there is floating around in the recesses of my mind.  There is a font of material there, but most of that is not truly fit for publication or mixed conversation.  They are the absurdities of my mind.  The things that really make me marvel that most would find troubling and then wonder if I should be locked up somewhere for having a screw loose.  I also don’t desire to be the guy sitting on the street corner talking to a lamp shade and living out of a grocery cart.  Snap out of it!  Somehow I have to seek distraction that will at one time allow for a controlled creative process to flower into that which I feel is my calling while still maintaining the relative sanity that is required for day to day existence.

And just like that, I realized the reason for the message I received at the end of last year.  Why I must find my way to Santiago de Compostella.  The pilgrimage is the answer.  A month of relative solitude to find balance and meaning.  Enough time to formulate a game plane and stick to it.  The newness of our adventure has worn off and the lack of focus in my life which seemed a nice vacation from the working stiff life I once live is beginning to take its toll.  People constantly ask the question and until recently I haven’t given it much thought.  Perhaps in the end they all have it figured out and I have been deluding myself by believing that THEY were the blind ones.  After all, I wouldn’t say that I am “bored” as they often refer to it, but still I am caught off guard these days because of a certain lack of purpose.  Has it really taken me this long to realize that?  And so,  as I sat watching Toy Story with my youngest last night I was lost in thought as usual as the evil neighbor kid begins to burn Woody’s head with a beam of sunlight through a magnifying glass.  There it was.  The answer.  FOCUS.  I need focus.  Has it been laziness that has allowed me to float along in the ethereal like a hippy on an acid trip?  Nothing wrong with being an artist or an eccentric, but I need to focus those efforts into an overall purpose.  If I can manage it, perhaps I will find the meaning I have been searching for this past year or so.  I think I know where this is heading, but I still have some things to sort out.  Until then, buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.  R.