The Living Rube Goldberg Machine

The advice usually given is, "live for today, not tomorrow." I can't say that I should have followed that advice, but I can say for certain I generally didn't. I've spent most of my life making sure that my future would be secure. While it may have ultimately been a mistake, I invested my time into what would be to come instead of what was here today and gone tomorrow. I believed that one day, I would be at a place where tomorrow would come.

Call me shallow, but I got to thinking about this because I was talking about our long con history with a friend. I'm just not going to conventions as often as I used to, despite them having played a big role in shaping my life. Not that things don't come and go; most things do, and for me as well. But other things just came into play, things I needed to do. School, work, life, etc. It's something I still love doing, and see no reason not to continue.

I've found that I've been most satisfied with life when I've done things... not impulsively, but more on a whim. When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. I'm in a place where anything reasonably likely to happen, I can deal with. That certainly hasn't always been the case, but -- in short -- over the last few years I've really managed to get my shit together.

It's not a new balance in life I'm looking for, either. Quite the contrary: a balance is bringing existing elements together in a better way. I'm looking to do more, make more of life.

As a child I was told television would rot the brain, that it was more of an evil necessity than something of any good. And, as a result, as a teen and later an adult, I've come to love watching television (and similar activities) to a degree that my parents would have thought unhealthy. Similarly, I was brought up to be extremely unassertive. Other people were just right, or if they were just wrong, you never should contradict them. That was a hurdle that took a lot longer to get over for many reasons, though probably mainly because I didn't even realize how much it was damaging me.

But I finally have. I got a terrible start to life, and once I realized that I've been trying to catch up since. But I've been running, and running, and that's the pace that makes me comfortable. I've seen this kind of zeal in many other people, and only recently have I realized it's the same thing in me. Take away a person's childhood, and they will spend the rest of their life looking for it. Can't say whether or not I'd have liked my life to have been easier. As much as many parts have sucked, it's that same thing that's made me strive for that much more.

That would all be a pretentious way to say, "I'm gonna go to more cons again." And that's not really what it's about. It's about the outlook I'm striving for, the outlook I think I can achieve. Something that involves finding the joy in little things, and building targets for the big things.

As a side note, since LiveJournal is dying, I've turned to using it as it was originally envisioned, a journal to keep thoughts written down, which happens to be online and shareable. So, here's some words from Courage Wolf.