I’m thinking that maybe the constant on of my life for the last few months is really starting to catch up to me. I didn’t get out of bed today until well after 1:30 pm, which isn’t that unusual for me on a Saturday. I’m a “night owl.” I actually feel like I get better sleep during the day. That’s how I’ve always been, going back all the way to stories of my parents threatening to lock me in my room to keep me in bed at night. So, the part of that big sleep that shows how exhausted I’ve really been is the fact that I passed out at about 7:00 last night.
That doesn’t mean as much as most people might think it means. I do that from time to time. I spend weeks or months building up large piles of sleep-debt and then the sleep-repo man comes to collect eventually. That’s also something I’ve done my entire life. I just don’t have a healthy relationship with sleep.
So, what does all of this have to do with 2012 and self reflection?
Probably nothing, but it’s where my mind has been so far today. Dealing with the piles of eye boogers and a dried out throat from long, long hours of sleep starts the day off in a fairly grumpy mood. To top it off, since I slept for somewhere close to 18 1/2 hours, I missed a couple of meals in there. I’m hungry. I’m grumpy.
It’s Saturday, December 1st, 2012, and this is my life.
I think there might be a reason that I’ve spent most of the time since I got up listening to a YouTube Playslist of 90s cartoon theme songs. I’ve been feeling nostalgic for months now. I’m taking that as a sign that all the awesome things in the world happened 20 years ago. Since I believe that now, I think it officially makes me old. I’m not sure, though. I have a lot of traits that might make me still be officially young. For example, I live in a basement apartment that doesn’t have a stove or oven.. I literally cook all of my food in the microwave. I technically don’t have a kitchen sink, either, but I’ve found a few ways around that. Mostly being that when you cook in the microwave there isn’t usually a lot of dishes that need washing.
I guess I’m spending a Saturday feeling a strange mix of age and lack of accomplishment.
That’s probably a wonderful place to start a month of self-reflection. I mean that, too.
I have been afraid for a very long time now that I wasn’t going anywhere, or worse, was digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole. That’s the fear that clings most constantly to my brain and pops up every few days , usually at a completely random moment when I’m distracted with something unrelated.
And there is the theme of 2012 – “Distracted with Something Unrelated”
All year this year, I’ve been running from the things that I find uncomfortable to face. Really, it’s about how I don’t want to admit that my life is changing in a way I don’t have as much control over as I want to believe I do. There is nothing worse than the thought that you don’t control your own destiny. I’m floundering in that. I need to accept that there are things in my control and things not in my control.
Sounds like I need to join a 12-Step program for adulthood.
Maybe that’s what I nee to do. Adulthood and it’s meaning is as much an addiction and an obsession as anything else can be. For me, it’s the unicorn, the grail, the hunting beast. It’s something that can never truly be attained, and yet, I keep searching for it.
This year has been a year of getting kicked in the teeth. It has been a year for being knocked down, dragged out and reminded that no matter how big I get, there is something out there that is ready to knock me back down to size and will keep doing it.
I’m not sure what I’m going to find as I turn over the stones in my soul for the next 30 days, or in the 30 days after that, or the 300 days after that. What I do know is that if I don’t go digging through the skeletons in the closet, I’m never going to find what I’m looking for.
I just wish I knew what that was. It might make it easier to find.