Coffee and Analog

Last night I found myself sitting next to a raging fire in the hours pushing midnight. Earlier in the day I officiated the wedding of a couple of my friends, and it went beautifully. The reception had ended not long before, and a few stragglers, me included, wanted to end the night sitting next to a fire one of us had made. As I stared into the warm glow of the burning wood, drowsiness settled into my muscles and made me feel like the weight of the day was melting off. I stretched and leaned my head back into the camp chair I was sitting in, and as I did, I caught a glimpse of one of the most magnificent night skies I had seen in quite some time.

As I took a moment to let the feeling of awe settle into the spaces between my slowing heartbeats, I couldn’t help but put my life into perspective in that single moment. It’s funny how easy it is to let life take ahold of us. How a lot of our lives are spent on autopilot. How many of us just kind of… exist. In that moment I felt insignificant in the grand scheme of time and life. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean that sometimes, the things we have going on in life may not be as big as we make them out to be. And at that moment in time, I had an instance of acceptance and let all my worries fade away.

After basking in that feeling for no more than a couple minutes, the drowsiness in my body took hold of me. I got up and made my way back into the farmhouse to fall asleep on the lumpy couch I had made my bed. But not before sending a mental wish and thank you out to the universe, and comparing the stars to sparkle I see in the eyes of someone I love very much.

Last night I did not sleep in my own bed in my own home. I did not get a restful night sleep. Instead, I found myself in a small town in Vermont an hour from where I live, trying to get whatever rest I could on a lumpy couch in the living room of a quaint farmhouse. I’m a Justice of the Peace and a couple of my friends asked me to officiate their wedding. Instead of taking the time to drive home in the wee hours of the morning after a night of drinking, only to drive back to officiate the ceremony the next day, I decided to spend the night wherever there was space for me. Which in this case ended up being a couch that looked comfier than it actually felt. A piece of furniture that was apparently bought for its looks, not its comfort.

Eventually I did end up falling asleep, only to be awoken a little after 5:30 in the morning by a horrid intermittent buzzing. At first I thought it was a fly, but quickly realized it was something more sinister. I threw the blanket over my head in hopes that it would just stop or go away. It didn’t. After a few minutes, I got up and made my way to the kitchen where I plucked an empty plastic Solo cup from the counter, a remnant from the night before. Then I waited. When i heard the buzzing again, my senses heightened, honing onto its source. A lone wasp that had apparently gotten in the night before flew frantically around the room bumping into anything and everything it got close to. Eventually it landed. On a normal day I would have just killed it, not thinking twice. But today was different. For some reason I felt the urge to catch it and let it go outside. So that’s what I did.

Not long after my run in with this wasp, the groom came downstairs and asked if I wanted to go for a ride to the nearby country story when they opened to help grab ice for the wedding reception. Since I was already up I agreed. We got to the store at 7:30 and went inside. A pleasant shopkeeper behind the counter informed us that unfortunately, they actually didn’t open until 9, but asked us what we needed. We explained to her what we needed, and instead of turning us away, she let us take the ice we came for and just asked that we come back and pay for them at some point during their open hours. I was struck with a feeling of gratitude and was reminded of a previous conversation I had.

A few days ago I was chatting with a friend of mine about a stressful situation we’ve both been dealing with. I was feeling self conscious about my actions regarding said situation, and as a way to lighten the mood with a bit of sarcasm she told me that I was “merely average”. I told her…

I think everyone is average. It’s what they choose to do that makes them extraordinary. How they handle situations. How they deal with adversity.

It’s my belief that the universe responded to the way I handled the wasp this morning by sending a bit of karma my way, and I truly believe that doing good things, being a good person, never goes unnoticed in one way or another. And for that I am grateful.

I struggle with motivation. Plain and simple. I guess that’s not entirely true. I guess a better way to put it is that I struggle with staying motivated doing things that I am not passionate about. It’s no secret that this past year has been somewhat of a whirlwind for everyone, and I feel like this past year has really opened my eyes to things that are emotionally meaningful to me and things that aren’t. But to take it a step further, I find that my motivation for things that I don’t feel deeply about in some way has been waining the more time goes on. I’ve been feeling very much like I need a change. To do something different. Which is why I started this blog, and why I decided to really assess the things I’m doing in life and if they are leading me in the direction I want to be going.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that life is full of things that you have to do that you may not find meaningful or that you might not be motivated to do for one reason or another. Work, school, obligations you agreed to but don’t find rewarding. The list goes on. I guess what I AM saying is that we could all take a step back and ask ourselves why we’re doing the things we’re doing and if we can make even small changes that lead us to feeling happier.

I don’t claim to know the answers to anything, but I can speak from my experience, and it’s telling me that living life on this metaphorical hamster wheel is not what I want to be doing. The mundane day to day life is not how I want to spend my existence.

I don’t want the world to happen to me. I want to happen to the world.

For as long as I can remember people have always thought of me as a positive person. Someone perpetually happy. A ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. To a certain degree that may be true. I do try to live my life looking on the bright side of things. Looking for the positive. Some days are harder than others.

The other day I got to thinking. While on the outside I may seem happy and positive, I think that what it all boils down to internally is not being sad. Not being hurt. Not being negative. Humans are imperfect beings, and as such, no one is always happy, or always negative or sad. I think it’s an important distinction to make that while yes, being happy is good, not being negative is arguably where we should try to be. A level baseline. I find that in my own life, happiness kind of falls into place when my headspace is in that “not good, not bad” place. Yes, sadness, anxiety, and negative emotions have the same capacity to sway my overall mood, but I find that if I start off from that middle ground, I’m more likely to be aware of situations and thoughts that can spin me into that negative space. From that middle ground, it’s easier for me to take a step back and be prepared to handle things that come my way so that I can maintain that level of positivity people see on the outside. Even if the world around me is anything but.

One thing that has helped me stay positive is gratitude. I frequently take stock of my life and the things I have and feel deep-seated gratefulness for those things that have contributed to my overall emotional well-being. The relationships I have in life, the people that care about and love me, having the basic necessities to live life, and being able to live life knowing that even if I feel sad or anxious, things could always be worse. And if I spend just a little time to really think about it, things really aren’t as bad as I make them out to be in my head.

I think because of this mindset of gratitude, I am drawn toward helping people when I can. I think because I feel so grateful for the people in my life that have helped me, I feel the need to live a life of service to others. To do things that will help others that may need it. And that in turn makes me happy.

I hope this blog does just that.

I think that one of the hardest things for me to accept about life is that the time we have on this earth is finite and we don’t have the time to do everything that we want to do. As mentioned in my last post, my interests are varied. Very varied. And as such I go through phases where I feel like I don’t spend nearly enough time on any given thing to make doing them feel fulfilling or satisfying. I think as time goes on I lean more toward the realization that I must pick and choose the things I spend time on. I need to slowly pair down the things that I do and choose the most meaningful ones.

In theory that should be easy enough to do. But in practice, it is anything but. The feelings that the act of cutting back makes me feel surprises me. Part of me feels like I’m letting down a former version of myself. I feel guilty for giving up on dreams that I’ve outgrown, or were never dreams to begin with. And another part of me feels regret for wasting money and time on the notion of things that never panned out.

But there’s the rub. All that is in the past. People grow. Interests change. And dreams die. There’s no sense in holding on to a shadow of something that you once thought would make you feel happy and satisfied when they no longer do. And even if I AM still interested in certain things, it doesn’t mean I need to continue investing more precious time and effort on them than I already do.

I think distinguishing between things that are hobbies and things that I really want to do helps immensely. And knowing that even though I may feel these things now, it will pass. I should feel grateful knowing that everything that has happened in the past, all the time I spent on things I once thought would mean more, has lead me to realize just where I’m going and where I truly want to be.

So I’ve been going through a very transitional phase in my life lately, and as a result I recently decided that I would try to live my life doing things that are more aligned with what I want to achieve out of life. My interests are varied, and I’ve been feeling more and more like I’ve been wearing myself thin doing things that don’t add up to feeling like I’ve been making much progress in achieving the things that really matter to me or where I want my life to go. With this change in my outlook on life came the daunting task of purging my life of things, both physically and mentally, that have kept me from taking steps in doing things that will get me to where I want to end up.

All that being said, you can’t really make this kind of change in your life and not fill it with something else. As such, I’ve been going through the process of spending less time doing things that I feel aren’t bringing me closer to the things I want, and more time on things that do. And so this blog was born. I’ve always wanted to start a blog, but never took the initiative to do so. I figured it would be a good starting point to see where this adventure takes me.

Thanks for joining me!