Dear Diary, (pt.2)

Where do I begin?

I mean, seriously…

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I saw the beautiful shell of my deceased Aunt lying in a casket today, and it has me pondering. Thinking. Reflecting on the many reflections I see, a never ending epiphany considering this birthday is the one that determines a lot of things about where I see my life and the direction I am heading and if I need to construct any detours or merge off on any of the upcoming forks in the road.

I continue to find myself staring into still water pools no matter where I’m at, the reflection of an infinite reflection as if I was staring into two mirrors that are facing one another. The ending of the decade known as my thirties, in which there were a couple of extreme highs, a lot of in-betweens, and a couple of extreme lows, has a different taste about it and all I can do is watch the ripples of a new tomorrow slowly roll away from me.

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Where do I go from here?

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A constant… I was that for so long and grew tired of it. I was bored. It was monotonous. Too predictable. I used to consider it a chore. I believed it to be a burden. So many things depended on me being the constant even though a shift was on the way for me, a self induced change to my current timeline. To my paradigm. A temporary transition, yes. A much needed reboot, yes. Not currently appreciated in totality for what it is even though I’m in the process of accepting it, yes, because the end result seems far too cloudy right now.

But right now, be honest with me for a second and I will reciprocate that unconditional giving in full retrospect.

Have you ever felt this way or any of the ways I’m about to describe?

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I have come to realize that constants are so important in this life and it’s okay for some of them to change as long as we respect them for what they were because we know when they have re-settled then they will once again become the anchor that lets the boat rest in its continual drift.

So I ask you – are you the boat, the water, or the anchor?

What am I?

Do I even know anymore?

Do you?

If a constant changes, for the better I may add, then I have to let it instead of being resistant to it. I have to be patient because that same constant may have been patient with me during my many seasons of life. We have to take care of our caretakers, our constants, because they too get exhausted and have their limits when it comes to living this life.

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Then, there are the variables… A change in the equation. I have become this for the first time in many, many years and am not used to it. It sucks, to be honest. You convince yourself for days on end that you want to be the variable then it happens and you regret it and reground yourself and your stance and you find your direction once again and fill your sails with wind and keep plowing the water with the hull of your weather beaten ship.

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Do we create change or are we simply the victim of it?

What happens when we become the actual change?

Do we ever get tired of waiting for ‘never’?

Being a variable affects you in many different ways. Most people will not like it when you become this. I do not like it when I am this because I thrive on consistency yet some of us find ourselves uprooting for a future point in time that has yet to take place. Nobody wants to feel stuck in an uncomfortable situation as more time sifts through the holes in our pockets.

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Then, at the click of my fingers, my mind goes back to my reflection. My epiphany. Our shell. Our soul’s exterior. Our soul’s interior. The energy within yourself. The connection between two bodies. The tiredness of living in the now. The fleeting sands that continue to fall down, down, further down into our nicked up hourglasses.

Then, the questions start filling my brain, your brain, our brains, all of us subliminally connected to a future hitching post that we cannot see right now.

Do we not want to fulfill our dreams when we realize the cost of chasing it is going to take more from us than we could possibly imagine? Do we abandon our destiny? What are we so scared of? What do we fear when it comes to roaming the unknown? Why are we afraid to manifest what we were already born with inside our very own soul?

Do we blow the dandelion or just stare at it?

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This reflection, this epiphany, I find myself in reminds me of when me and my wife shop for flowering plants. We look at all the colorful, nurtured, healthy, vivacious ones that are front and center and pick out a couple to purchase and plant and watch grow and bloom and hopefully spread for the next season when they reawaken from their cold slumber.

But then my footsteps carry me to the ones that have been carted off to the back corner, the discounted ones that are thirsting for love. The ones that are hungry for attention, craving something as simple as water and richer soil, wanting to be bought and stuck back into the Earth from whence it was plucked from, wanting nothing more but to be able to go back home.

Those are the ones I have pleasure sifting through.

Those are the ones I am after and not because they are cheap… but because they are forgotten.

How many times have you ever felt like you were forgotten?

I like those particular flowers because their true potential has been ignored.

Do you ever feel ignored?

Those particular flowers have been left to wither and eventually die out.

Have you ever felt lifeless and abandoned at the same time… such a lonely place to be.

I like sifting through those particular plants because, well, they deserve a chance at life, don’t they? A chance at turning into something they were always meant to turn into. A chance to root into fresh soil and enjoy what little life it has left on this Earth. That once ignored flower is like one us bedding underneath our weighted down comforter and streaming a season of our favorite show in a cold, dark bedroom, candles flickering to the left and right of us as a rainstorm beats lightly against the windows and side of the house.

A chance at a chance is better than no chance at all, isn’t it?

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I am going to be honest with you right now and I hope that is okay. Sometimes, I do not have the best of days and I find myself wondering if everything I do is irrelevant or if there is some kind of merit to the pattern I dissolve myself into, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Sometimes, I feel like my dream is not worth chasing and I should just settle and abandon it. I do not know if some of you ever feel like this or if it is just me or what is truly going on, here, in the streets of my mind, in the avenues and boroughs of the world that is “out” there.

In our world.

Our universe.

A time for all of us to shine before our light, inevitably, has to fade so another can take our place.

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This is where the ending of another decade of my life has me and I’m okay with it.

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I hope I’m not alone in thinking these things and leave it up to you on if you want to get in the passenger seat with me for this particular road trip through the desert, music blaring, windows down, world in front of us, past behind us kind of journey, an adventure that officially began for me back in 2002.

Sometimes, I find myself driving and driving and driving and even though my “B” key is acting up on my keyboard right now and gets stuck from time to time and I have to hit it three thousand times before an effin “B” is stamped onto this fake sheet of paper for all of you to read, I find myself purposefully looking for words that do not have a “B” in them so I can avoid it and I find myself asking myself,

“What are you running from?”

“What are you so scared of?”

“When are you just going to accept it and move on?”

“Just do the work and everything will take care of itself!”

One day, it just seems like you get all green lights and pats on the back for a job well done and you are not ignored for all your glorious personal traits and, other days, while driving with your kneecaps, after taking the first moist bite into your sausage and egg biscuit, the lid on your large, over-filled soda cup comes off over your lap after your right hand retrieves it from the middle console holder and as you quickly try to adjust your grip and stabilize the raging ocean in your hand, your defensive actions monsoons cold Pepsi into your lap, white water rafting cold liquid between the creases of your shorts and crevices of your crotch, and you feel the surging sugary river fan out in the seat below you and stop near your butthole and you’re a hour away from home and running behind for a very urgent doctors appointment and when you pull off at the first exit you come across, you realize that your significant other has negative thirty napkins in the car so your only option is to use one-third of a used Kleenex that you happened to stumble across under the seat, lying next to a one year old French fry and three brand new pennies, this minuscule fragment of cloth helping aid in soaking up a mere three droplets of soda, a sticky substance that you know you’re going to have to wear and let dry out by pointing all the air vents down at your lap for the next hour of your car ride and you’re just thankful you had one thousand percent cotton shorts on because it aided in soaking up all of the Pepsi instead of repelling it.

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An excerpt from the story of a true underdog’s underdog.

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How many of you are still with me?

Is it nice to not feel alone for once?

Go ahead! You can be honest with yourself. I’ll never know and, for me, there is so much unadulterated beauty in that premise, the undying connection between a half decent writer and a willing reader, a connection that no other person can manipulate, interfere with, or ruin.

Life is funny, you know? Not all of the time though. Sometimes, it gets the best of me. Sometimes, I get the best of it. Sometimes, it’s a draw even though I’d like to think that I’m still the victor. Cuss words help. Cuss words that you do not ask forgiveness for tend to weigh heavy on the salvation seeking heart but they do aid when life’s arrows become too sharp in the moment.

People, the world, whoever, will constantly try to convince you of “something”, whatever that “something” may be, yet it only gets as much attention as you allow. Time is going by faster than ever so throw that control mechanism out the window and search out the positives with the negatives and highlight the negatives with the positives so you can point them out when you have lost yourself in the midst of the crowd. Everything you need is deep within your exterior shell and you must tame it and unleash it and enjoy it and pamper your spirit, your soul, the life that resides inside each one of us.

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So, I guess this is where my reflection has led me today.

What have you been doing this entire time while you were reading?

We, the ones that are tired but are still so full of life, are the backbone of the universe.

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Next time you are shopping at the place that carries the flowers of summer, admire the ones that are put on front and center display for the beauty they project and know, deep within the confines of your brain, that, somewhere, there is a discounted cart full of neglected ones that still have the ability to project the same nostalgic color that all the others have if they are given the opportunity to do so.

I know this because I used to be that flower until the right person found me.

Until I found myself.

Until I found the right soil.

Until I found the right source of water.

And I refuse to quit growing regardless of what dirt I come across because none of us are promised tomorrow and the most beautiful tomorrow is today. ^TM

All of you are beautiful or handsome in your own way. It’s time to start believing that sexy statement and putting some faith and hope back into the things that are deemed worthy of our time while also putting that same said thing back into the most important thing of all – Ourself.

For now, though, I have to go because if I have to type another “B” and the key gets hung and will not type it, I might cuss for the six hundredth time since I first started typing this post.

The cuss words that you do not ask forgiveness for, right?

Chin up, everyone.

It’s time to see the world for what it is because we need to believe in ourself now more than ever!

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My second short film, Inside Out, made it to the final days of the selection process for an upcoming in-state film festival but failed to move on to the next round. I am honored that it made it as far as it did and was not instantly rejected on its first viewing in the first couple of rounds.

In the weeks to come, I will be reviewing a couple more Film Festivals to send my new short film to and hopefully post a future date, time, and local venue on when I would like to publicly premiere it before sending it over to my YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj-Tb_yyFpdNG2VvCMJnAvg.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and positive energy.

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Some days, you are like this.

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Some days, you are like this. (this was me on the day I spilled the Pepsi on my crotch).

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And, sometimes, well, you just abide.