September 6, 2008

• A body (not) in motion…

  One of the things I like about blogging and the Internet: They consume time.
  
  One of the things I DISlike about blogging and the Internet: They consume time.
  
  Point? Part of my reason for periodically dropping all attempts to update here have little to do with being bored with writing, nor with not having a good time… and everything to do with simply not having the time or bandwidth to give it.
  
  Perhaps it’s an oxymoron that I’m here writing, even while I am frantically busy. So shoot me. Maybe it’s just tuna salad that puts me in such a contrarian mood….
  
  Different people are motivated by different things, and different people have different “natural states.”
  
  Some people are “bodies in motion.” Even if there is absolutely nothing to do, they will make something to do, so they don’t have to sit still. They always have lives that are filled to overflowing with an endless cornucopia of events and happenings they must tend to. When I am around them, their psychic energy always feels like that of a hummingbird; flighty, flitting, unfocused, always moving, never at rest. Not calling them “wrong,” just saying that it exhausts me.
  
  I am– by nature– a “stationary object.” All other things being equal, I will sit still and watch paint dry. Or I will sit on a rock and watch waves break. I have no natural inclination to actively “do” things… maybe with the exception of things like making out, discussing the deeper meaning of life and the Universe, or cooking a really good steak for dinner. On the whole, I am very skilled at taking the lowest and easiest route over the fence, as far as everything else goes.
  
  When something “critical” happens in my sad little whirled, I find myself with no choice but to get up off my duff and deal with things. And when I do change states and become a “body in motion” I am more or less like an avalanche.
  
  Some might say that I have a “high moment of inertia.” It takes a lot to get me to move, but once I am moving, it takes a lot to stop me, again. I have a life history of coming face-to-face with situations I have had to address head-on, and I have typically done so with a fervor and intensity that has left everyone around me in the dust, including even the most frenetic, perpetually on-the-go Energizer Bunnies I know. Those who formerly criticized me as a stationary object suddenly lie on the ground in exhaustion, begging me to explain how I can work for 19 hours straight, without even a three-minute break to pee. I have actually been called “not human” a couple of times. I’m not kidding.
  
  My entire motivation is to deal with “whatever” it is I am facing, in as short order as possible, to I can return to a state of peace.
  
  But I am sortof digressing, here.
  
  It’s much easier (and preferable, as a pastime) for me to spend 6-8 hours a day creatively fucking off by typing a bit and reading other people’s musings, than it is for me to deal with the normal stuff of life. Even though I have possibly the most wonderful and flexible work life imaginable, I’d just as well not work. A lot of folks– over a great many years– have told me “Oh, you’d get bored with doing nothing, in short order.”
  
  Nope.
  
  Not in the slightest.
  
  The more guru-esque and ethereal ones say “You just haven’t found what you’re meant to do, yet.“
  
  ::: sigh :::
  
  My typical response goes something like “Sorry, guru-dude, you’re wrong. I just haven’t found a way to get paid for what I am meant to do. Which is ‘as little as possible.’”
  
  At the moment, I find myself in “one of those periods,” where life demands of me that I remain “frantic,” so I can arrive at another period of sitting still. I’m working towards going to this HSP retreat in upstate New York in about a month, and the following weekend I’m heading down to check out another event that’s directly tied to part of my creative slackerhood… and something else of great importance, too. I “put up with” being frantically busy so I can afford to go do these things. But these periods of working hard are never anything beyond something “I put up with.”
  
  Funnily enough, one of the areas of my life I have long put “a great deal of effort into” is the very process of how to minimize having to put “a great deal of effort” into ANYthing. I love the idea of “Voluntary Simplicity:”
  
  

  “We can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is
  outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which
  our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious
  contact with living.”
  –Duane Elgin
  

  
  I’ve had people tell me “Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re poor!” Actually… I totally disagree. This was a choice I started embracing when I had a six-figure income and all the trappings of success… and determined that wasn’t the life I wanted, so I reinvented myself and voluntarily took a 70+% pay cut in the process. Now, if people were instead saying “Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re LAZY!” they’d be closer to the mark… at least in the sense that I evidently almost completely lack the “Protestant Work Ethic” that drives this country.
  
  That has almost always been true. When faced with questions such as “Don’t you want to ACHEIVE something?” I almost inevitably list a host of intangibles like “live peacefully,” and “have love in my life,” and “have easy access to nature,” and “live close to the beach,” and “have nice friends.” And it hasn’t been for a lack of trying… but I have just never been able to think in terms of creating “tangible monuments” to make statements about my life. I have tried really hard to “feel” differently because I’m wearing a $600 suit, rather than second hand stuff from Goodwill. I have tried really hard to “feel” differently, driving a late model luxury car, as opposed to my old wrecks held together with chewing gum and tape. I have tried really hard to “feel” differently because I lived in a large house in the “right” part of town, vs. in a modest rental.
  
  In some ways, what I have “felt” is actually disappointment, with the former… one layer of disappointment at the fact that I felt nothing, but had to work 10 times as hard to get those things. And what’s the freakin’ point of that??? A second layer of disappointment at the fact that “outerwear” bearing no relation to my essence as a human being somehow earned me “special” and “preferential” treatment. That’s just plain sad.
  
  I’ve sort of gone in a circle, here. I guess the end point here is that I am in Energizer Bunny mode, at the moment… but in pursuit of “intangibles,” such as the value of the human connections that go with that retreat I’m both helping organize and later will be a part of. And then again, more human connections, relating to the subsequent festival. Both are simply about “being there,” and “being part of something.”

  • 5:08 pm
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