HERE WE GO AGAIN

It's silly and naive.
Yet here I am again, with another fresh start, looking toward another 365 days wondering how and if this one will be any different. I'd like to be idealistic and consider all the things that this year will be for me in all the ways last year wasn't, but I wonder if, in some way, that's counterproductive.

I put too much pressure on myself to discover something profound and revelatory, eager to check things off my two ton to-do list like "find meaning," "discovery the thing you really want to do in life" and "write every day," but these are things I say to myself year after year.

This morning, I thought about how to do things differently. This morning, I sat on a crowded commuter bus and wondered how I could somehow figure out a way to not take that commuter bus. But I know the answers. They're simple answers.

It's not laziness. It's restlessness. It's fear of failure. It's not wanting to disappoint myself above disappointing all others. After all, only I know all the ideas I've had left unfulfilled. Only I know about this overwhelming mental storage closet of stories, concepts, projects, what have. There are so many. So, so many.

But all those things are so cliche. I feel even weird admitting to myself that my lack of motivation or the inability to find creative fulfillment is because of these things that are so asinine. These are the sort of things you explain to people and they laugh at your ridiculousness, respond with encouragement. They always say something nice.

There's a mental block so palpable, it almost feels literal. That there's a concrete slab in my brain so formidable that it won't allow ideas to travel through. Like a border without possibility of entry. I hear what people say and appreciate their faith and their kind words and their want to be helpful, but the effort in a phase of my life when effort is in short supply. The physical and metal demand to make an effort may seem small to some, but the demand of life is...and this is how it works.

Excuses. Aren't the contributions I can potentially make more powerful that the fears holding me back from making them? I don't know the answers yet. But I do know that this morning, I am writing here in my space after not having done so for a long while. But the thing that prevents me from continuing is that I don't necessarily have the time to belabor on thoughts and musings as I once did. I have to tell myself that that's acceptable.

Isn't it?