Approaching the Wall

When I was a child, I used to look up at the moon almost every night. I was entranced by it.

My dad told me that it was made of blue cheese and I believed him, thinking the whole thing was a magical escape actually closer than it seemed. I only saw the parts that were glowing; the soft white curve of light was all I focused on.

During a crescent moon, I would see only a golden sliver and wonder where the rest of it could possibly have disappeared to. I felt as though some God must have taken a bite of the cheese and accidentally ate it all. I looked up in wonder. 

Today, I focus only on the dark outline. During new moons, I can faintly see the black surface, shaded by Earth’s intervention of the sun’s rays. I see the whole picture; it isn’t just the white anymore.

For a while, I considered this to be a pessimistic thought: I notice the black more than the white. In my head, everyone else perceives and appreciates the part that is most noticeable. The moon is half full rather than half empty to them, I thought. I wondered what was wrong with me. Why had I grown to be so cynical. 

I see now my mistake. Crescent moons are defined by the limit of the visibility. Life isn’t just one shade, it’s both. The beautiful half-moon we take for granted is made possible only by the darkness. We appreciate it for the lack of something else. If it was a full moon every night, it would lose its power over us; it would simply be another sun to keep us up at night. 

We love the moon because, like us, it is dynamic and evolving. It is different every day, it is capricious. It gives and takes. Our tides, our moods, our gravity is dictated by how the moon appears, even if we don’t realize.

The sun is a constant figure—it is always going to be there and be bright. The moon is under no such guise, she is there one day and gone the next. When I see an outline in the sky at night, I see the deeper personality that others don’t notice. I feel a sense of pride in my intellection. There is a bigger picture that we have only begun to discern. 

***

Life has been difficult again lately. I see only the dimming sliver illuminated against the darkness; and it seems as though the shade is quickly overtaking the crescent. It feels harder to breathe. 

In a post back in December, I felt like I finally had my life back on track. Everything was looking up and the world felt promising. The moon was bright. As I worked through the long, dark winter, the rotation spun and answers that I felt permanent began to work themselves loose.

Preconceived notions began to fall on their face and the bricks I had built as my foundation began to topple one by one. I feel now as though I’m standing on a small platform with only a few, bare stones beneath me to support my floundering balance. 

I am coming up on an immovable wall with my “career field”.  Bartending no longer scratches the itch that it once did, and the place I currently work treats me as no more than a cog in the gears. As someone who finally understands the potential I hold, I feel my creative and leadership spirit dying a fast death and I worry that spending too long in the quicksand will swallow me whole. 

My support group in Nashville is going through an ill-timed journey, as life mandates. It’s never a good time. It won’t be until October that we will all be reunited in the same room again. Someone will always be gone and, especially now that I have left Franklin, it is harder to see them at all.

It is a tough thing to go through life feeling like a man without a country. I don’t make close friends easily and it is a difficult task to be away from the ones I do have. 

Creatively I have been blocked to the extreme. This is the first time I’ve sat down to write in over a month. Reading The Artist’s Way has encouraged me to try to pick it back up.

According to the book, I am learning I’ve been a “shadow artist” for much of my life. I don’t feel as though I am allowed to rely on creativity and my inner artist to support myself so I gravitate toward people and jobs that do allow themselves to give in. Growing up, creativity felt like a hobby, not something I was allowed to completely succumb to. I needed to be realistic.

This was no fault of anyone’s except myself. The inner voice in my head wouldn’t let me really give it a try. Anything I was interested in, I would talk myself out of or pretend as though I didn’t care about it. As a result, I am an editor for people who aren’t any more creative than me but, rather, more audacious. I see people on stage with the same talent as me and I must give them credit, for they had the courage to use the creativity to fulfilling ends, regardless of the inner critique in their head. 

The root issue is that I feel weak lately. Weak to pursue the life I really want. Weak to speak up and speak honestly. Weak to give life an sincere try. It feels hard to have conversations lately as I don’t reckon I can get across the point I’d actually like to make. It feels hard to go into a job where I don’t have the authority to just be myself and have that be enough. It feels hard to watch my friends travel and living a life made of worthy stories while I sit and nurture regret. It is to the point where I have a hard time just getting out of bed again. 

I never usually make new year’s resolutions, but this year I had two: Live honestly and be present. So far, as it appears to me, I’ve accomplished neither. 

But like the half-moon, I understand there is more to the picture. I need a solution for the immediate problems but it only exists through expansive, intensive inner change. My weakness, mental truancy, and sadness have to be addressed before moving forward. 

To begin, I am changing a small, yet distinctive, thought process I’ve been having. 

Somewhere along the way, my thoughts became skewed to a mindset of: What can I gain from life? What actions exist to benefit me directly? I have considered compromising my inner code to look for a corporate job just so I can receive financial stability and some HOA-branded form of power. I don’t want to do a job like that, but I could gain a lot from it and the temptation, admittedly, is proving to be hard to beat. 

However, the question I should be asking is this: What can I give to life? What can I provide to the world that is unique and special? How can I improve the lives of others rather than just take from them? 

I need to flip my line of thinking to get anywhere in life. I spent a long time in my early twenties just expecting the universe to hand me the things I wanted; understanding and accepting that I alone am responsible for making things happen was my first tough lesson in life. Once I understood that, I started to work harder and take more accountability for the things I do have. 

But that isn’t enough, I’ve realized.

I thought once I buckled down and started to show results, this would be the key to unlocking the secrets of the world. I expected life was like The Odyssey and once I finished my journey, I would have the things I wanted. I would have stability and money and freedom to travel. 

I fought like hell to carve a dream job out of nothing last year and actually made it happen. But that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly happy. I certainly don’t have the money to back it up.  

I practiced, studied and grit my teeth at bartending for the last three years to wind up as someone with great skills and a terrible state of mind. 

So where do I go from here? Now that I’ve decided to change my tune and try to focus on giving rather than taking, it is a good start but I still need money. I need immediate and eventual solutions. 

Eventual honestly seems easier to tackle; I want to write my way out of this.

One of the few, irrefutable skills (I hope) that I have is writing. Conversations seem to get harder for me lately, especially as I escape further into my mind, and it feels as though I can never truly say what I want to say. I’m better at being honest but that doesn’t make me better at having honest conversations.

Writing is my true form of escape that I know I do more effectively than the average person. While many probably have the same thoughts, I have geared my life toward immersing myself in the literary world and find a great satisfaction in it. Books live forever. Writing lives forever. I have a voice that is unique in experiences and choices; I think it deserves to be heard.

I want to travel and write about those travels for others. That is the way I hope to contribute, by making the world smaller and linking universal experiences across the world. In a time where fear increasingly dominates the news cycle, I hope to show that people are the same wherever you go and educate others about the important stories and figures that contribute to rich histories. 

Immediately though, I’m conflicted. I don’t have money to travel and I haven’t written enough for a sponsorship, magazine deal or rich investor to put their faith in me. Obviously I have to begin writing a lot more in the meantime and practice while building up a base.

But I’m still incredibly unhappy bartending right now and I am unsure how to reconcile that. I don’t know whether to look for another bar job that might inspire creativity or abandon ship completely. Likely the former is the answer as the bar provides my income and I have demonstrable skills that can get me in the door anywhere I want to go. 

I use this post as a form of posterity to detail my thought process for myself and for anyone reading.

Even when life seems to be heading in the right direction, it can be derailed just as quickly the response to that is a true test of character. I’d like to be able to look back at this in a few years and see the kindling of creative thought starting to grow into a flame. I’d like to think this is the last time I’ll go through this but I know it isn’t, so I want to remember how I responded in the midst of it. 

Whatever my future holds, I want to hope it involves using my voice to make others happier. No matter what I do, I want to be a figure of positivity. In my current quagmire, I know I’m not living up to those standards. Once I have a second to breathe, things will change.