Self Doubt and Reinvention

Hours

 Bare with me if you will, while I expose to you my mid life crisis. 

   Like most folk this recent piece of the past has been unsettling for me. Outside the Covid sphere of influence my life has changed dramatically. From happily banging nails and carpenting houses to being injured, unemployed and living with my parents for a spell; at 36 there's a whole level of humility and relationship dynamics I wasn't ready for. Still not mind you. My shame around being back at my folks place, unfounded as it may be was immense and kept me from being one hundred with those around me. I belong to one of the few cultures where living with your parents is frowned upon after your early twenties and my fragile ego could barley withstand the blow. 

  Not hitting the breaks, yet cautiously gearing down approaching the off ramp, or on ramp depending on which the side of the coin you're looking at, to 40 I've found myself lost. Lost again. That is assuming I began found or at least in the appropriate lane on my way to where I'm supposed to be. I do have great faith in the universe for providing the correct landing spot for all of us should we choose to heed the signs and not fight what is being presented to us. It just seems my lane to get there is a bit broader with a far more welcoming shoulder to skid through than I envision when I use the term "lane". 

1988 Harley Sportser 1200

   For the past few months I've been spinning my wheels in the quagmire of self doubt. Once again I've found myself asking " Who am I? WHAT AM I!?!" The advice I've so easily dispatched to those who seek my council of "Sit with it, let it come to you", "Look at it from a different Perspective, what are you not seeing?" is a gap on my peg board, the missing tool outlined in sharpie. I must be driving my partner up the wall with ideas of self reinvention, rapidly changing ideas, throwing every thought against the wall haphazardly without taking the time to see what sticks and formulating a plan.

  Within all this manic insecurity I've managed to read some great books, get out camping a couple times, bear spray myself at close range, catch up with pals I haven't seen since the beginning of Covid, ridden some motorcycles, started the rebuild of an old Harley that has some deep roots (more on that later), gotten in lots of swims, watched The Sopranos on the couch with my Boo, the windows open the warm summer evening heat breezing through and eating veggies out of our garden. If I didn't know any better from a different perspective that sounds like a pretty damn good life, and I'm happy to have it. Which ever direction it chooses to take me.

Harley Sporster Cylinders and Heads

Flow (state) Superior

 

It took me a good long while to acknowledge what is happening in my life and I must admit I'm not always in tune with it but when I manage to gain some quiet and reflect I realize my vision and dreams are slowly coming to fruition. Slowly is the key and hardest part for me to accept. I find myself constantly wrapped up in achievements and goals and an unrelenting drive for some bizarre idea of success. Forcing the universe to work in amongst my timetable hasn't worked yet so I don't know why I continue trying to make it bend to my will.

Slowly my dreams and aspirations are coming to fruition, it takes effort to slow down and be aware of what I'm creating for myself and it's all a bit vague still but slowly, the pieces are falling into place. A few years ago after my fourth or fifth trip to the psych ward sitting in rehab for the second time I had to get serious about my recovery or I wouldn't have been much longer for this world. I started to visualize the person I wanted to become and act as if. Sat at the back of the common area in the stabilization ward of the Royal Jubilee Hospital beside a folded up ping-pong table and a tower of dirty food trays holding what was leftover of our dinners; decadent cheese sandwiches of bread, margarine, a cheese slice, margarine, another slice of bread, possibly the remnants of a fruit cup, I was trying to draw some vision of my ideal future. Pretty far fetched from the shared room and squeaky gurney I slept in I wrote down plans of travel, learning to fly fish, building a better relationship with my family and folks around me, becoming more in touch with myself and my emotions, building schools, growing food and what I thought it might take to get there.

    Again I started to act as if. Going to countless AA and NA meetings that first year, listening instead of talking as if I had the necessary humility. Dragging myself to yoga classes when I didn't feel like it and acting as if I were that zenful yogi I envisioned. Putting my ass on the cushion and meditating or at least sitting with purpose as my mind would race acting as if I had a clue to what I was supposed to achieve. In under two years of acting as if I was on my way to Cambodia to build a school and drinking water systems for an impoverished village, emailing back and forth to my family, healthy, strong and flexible and unbeknownst to me more calm, mindful and easier to be around. 

I sit hear now with a familiar feeling of unknowing. Somewhere between a low vibration of anxiety, a patient calm, excitement, a trust in the future I've never had before. I can feel I'm on the precipice of another plunge into a future curated by a power much greater than myself. I've been given the experience and fortitude to take the next step and have faith in the ability of the universe to provide. My future has not revealed itself to me but a whisper of a shadow is starting to form, it's vary elusive and hand wavy but something is there on the horizon and I can tell it wants to take shape.

Big Dreams and Covid Creepies

    A perpetual game of cat and mouse within myself between any number of selves residing inside me creates a bit of a dilemma. A breeding ground for procrastination which induces any number of internal, generally negative dialogues between those countless selves. With so many ideas and inspirations added to the amount of time on my hands at the moment due to an injury that's keeping me from being my normal active self I feel spun out, unable to focus, wanting to reach out and connect while at the same time isolate and focus on my path. 

    After an incredible weekend away, in town, a Covid staycation filled with an abundance of food, dips in mineral pools, naps, great sex and even a couple NBA games thanks to the cable TV I woke up this morning rejuvenated and inspired. After a visit to the kinesiologist and physio I came home hung up my soaking wet clothes from riding the motorcycle in the rain and couldn't decide which way to turn. To calm my mind I entered what we refer to as The Amazon Room, as it's the boneyard of things delivered to us from our gracious overlord Jeff Bezos and unfortunately not the jungle Shangri-La I so whish it was, and lit a candle to sit in meditation and gain some focus and calm. I did not succeed.

    I'm thoroughly enjoying writing these blog posts and am shocked and honored when people take the time to read them and respond. Yet it oddly feeds the derogatory self inside that reminds me I'm no good, I'm no author, I'm not smart nor academic enough to write anything worthy of other peoples time. And somehow in that jumble of shelves within me the act of writing stops me from actually writing. 

I feel this dilemma constantly, pushed and pulled between catharsis and self judgment. A typical trait of an addict is delusions of grandeur and I think I've drank so much of the Kool-aid I can't lift a finger or think a thought without second guessing myself and my intentions. When am I sincerer in my actions and realizing a genuine connectivity and relatability I may have and when has the ego taken over. A bit of ego looks good on a young man, but having just passed 37 full rotations I'm afraid that ship has sailed and I'm still internally reeling from the chaos I created in my brash younger days any whiff of ego sends scuttling deep inside myself to overanalyze and judge. 

    The photos above were taken at two special places for me. The top, a haunt from my youth I've come to revisit. What I once saw and thought was so pretty it could be southern France or Italy I now see someplace so stunning it could be nowhere else. The second is a place of mixed emotions and lost flies. A great little trout river out passed Sooke it can be both peaceful, serine and a complete fucking piss off and waste of time. A cycle that can rotate at least three times with an hour.

 I sit here as my tea steam steeps, tangy sweet with turmeric and lemongrass, in search of something that eludes me. I'm ok with the search now as opposed to the aimless flailing into the depths of addiction as was my only counter measure against such uncertainty in the past. It's the search itself I believe I live for. An unease with myself, KD Lang would refer to it as the constant craving. Not a craving for a thing, a drug or person but a yearning, unfulfillable, I've come accustomed too. Some days I hate it and I'm uncomfortable by how it makes me feel, other days I'm inspired and in full control of my future only to realize my arrogance later; the audacity to think I have a vote in what the universe has planned for me. Is it reinvention every time my life requires me to pivot or a humble shedding of yet another sheaf exposing myself more and more until I'm forced to walk the path to which I'm destined. 

    I write this blog for I find it cathartic. I have no idea how many people will be interested in the inner workings of my mind or what the judgements, of which I'm terrified, will be. It's a practice in humility and vulnerability of which both are outside my comfort zone. Yet I find myself more secure after I've shared my thoughts and for that reason I should do this more often.  Insecurity is familiar for me, once

dealt with by cocaine and warm vodka I now find myself leaning into it. A comfortable dis-ease. Injured and off work, in need of a new career I lean into the loss of identity once more and take pause in the void. I've found I get so wrapped up in what I assume people see me as I forget to be myself. Skateboarder. Carpenter. Partier. I've held onto those labels to hard, and for too long. I'm much more than that, perhaps I'm less? I don't partake in any of those activities with regularity anymore. I wake up early, I mediate, I drink too much coffee, the proper amount of tea. I ride bikes motorized and otherwise, I dream of fly fishing and growing more food. I play tennis and dance in the kitchen with my partner and stress over things I can't control.

    I have no idea what I'm supposed to be or where I'm supposed to be going but I'm genuinely happy to wake up tomorrow, stare into the abyss of my future and welcome what comes.