it is really saddening to realize that a couple years ago feels like the top of my game. i was practicing every day, i had a goal that i was working towards. i wrote and directed a play from scratch. i had dreams and projects and i spent every single one of my waking moments trying to achieve them. my time was absolutely booked. even trying to find room for a simple coffee date seemed impossible. six days a week i would study, six days a week i would learn, and on the seventh day i would try and rest, but i always knew it was just a very short matter of time before i had to be up and running again. i’m not saying this is it, because it’s probably not. i’m young and still dare dream, i still get ideas that move me deeply. but, all in all, my life has started to taste stale. my current state of affairs has been sitting a little too long in the cupboard and it has lost all of its taste, its appeal. nothing new seems to be going on, and any one of my attempts to bring about some newness in my life to inspire some sort of motion seems [perpetually fruitless.
i try to write music, i try to create art, i try to write a story. none of these many things that i try seem to ever be enough. there are piles and piles of unfinished projects and ideas that i simply have not fulfilled—and for what? at the end, existence seems empty and downright meaningless if it feels like i’m not able to stay on track with any one given project for long enough to really achieve anything. i’m not even sure what, if anything, has changed so much in my life. what is it? perhaps i’m not putting enough pressure on myself. but then, isn’t the very fact that i yearn to continue to learn and grow evidence that i want to pursue my dreams? all of my attempts to make any progress feel entirely fruitless. i’m living my life at a stalemate. it feels like i am stuck and yet i continue to move. it feels like my life has purpose and direction but i have no means of transportation to allow me to arrive at the destination that i have for so long had my eyes on.
and it seems like perhaps writing is the only alternative. surely, i cannot write about the things that i would like to write about. something about that idea just seems foreign. i have ideas and i’ll sketch them out in words, but when i try to turn anything of that into a more concise and fully-formed thought it all falls apart.
and so, write.
i write about my frustration, about the nothings that appear to be going on around me. it should be smooth sailing from here and the view is great, but there is something about being wrapped up in my own head that doesn’t really let me get past. or perhaps this is just the four a.m. rambling of a sleep-deprived and unfulfilled artist. perhaps that is so. i can’t deny that i have felt moments of great inspiration in the past days, weeks and months. i have felt great motivation to continue, to keep pushing to keep my life in constant and steady motion. i have a destination and i have felt more than encouraged to keep going towards it. and still, somehow i manage to feel… this. this incompleteness. this feeling that there is nothing new, interesting, or exciting in my life right now—and that there might never be.
the realization that my entire life could be passing by while i am utterly stuck in inaction is absolutely daunting. i’m at what most people consider the prime of their lives. i am studying at a university, i am working towards a degree in two fields that i absolutely adore. i am young and lively and in love. i have great friends and inspiring professors, all whom have the seemingly unfounded but equally unshakeable belief that i am going places. and yet, as this all passes by, i am frozen. i have a steady job and i have the great privilege of teaching my craft. why, then, do things feel so distant? i have a reason to wake up in the morning so why, then, am i unable to shut my eyes long enough to sleep?