I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life right now. I think the word is “recovering.” I’ve made some big mistakes in my life, and I am starting to clean up the pieces. I had a plan at one point. I don’t really remember what it was, or how it even got started, but I remember having it. Then, somewhere along the lines of my life it just sort of… faded away. I wish I could be more melodramatic about that. So, I will be…
From my earliest memories I had a goal in life. I always had a direction to be walking in, a path to follow. They didn’t always make sense, I have a clear memory of wanting to be a dog at one point in my life, and some of them were clearly megalomaniacal, but there was always a goal. Then, like the morning fog burning up under the heat of the early sun, my road map disintegrated, and I wandered aimlessly.
There we go. That seemed appropriately soap-opera.
It might seem like I’m reaching for it, but it really does feel like that sometimes. When I dropped out of college, I was declaring that I no longer had a purpose worth working towards. I don’t know if I was saying that I was giving up on myself, or if I had just decided that I wasn’t able to do the work anymore. Some part of me probably believes both of those things, but I think for the most part, I was just sick of the pressure I was putting on myself. For years I never gave myself respite, and I thought that by throwing away the goals I’d manage to let myself have a break for awhile.
For a few years, it did. I just floated through life and I didn’t worry about anything. I made some incredibly unhealthy decisions. I lived like a hermit. I let myself just exist.
It isn’t in my nature to do well without pressure. I’m a slacker, a procrastinator. I’m not very good without direction and instruction.
I need that guidance. I need an outline and, if it’s available a step-by-step instruction sheet.
I’m not the guy that throws away the directions when he assembles some moron-key furniture.
I like to have details, as many details as possible.
But life doesn’t come with instructions, no matter how much assembly is required.
So, years after abandoning my eternal quest for (mostly unobtainable) goals, I’ve started looking for new goals. Something. Anything.
I’m starting to assemble my own step by step instructions.
Unfortunately, They’re still in Swedish.