It's tricky thing, to evaluate yourself and what you're becoming. You live with your regrets, failures and worst moments across your shoulders, but letting those things become more than they are by dictating a path with less adventure or fulfillment is the greatest loss to learning about yourself. Embracing the mistakes and taking something from it is always what you're told to do, and for good reason.

Today

I made a personal breakthrough, one of those movie-moment epiphanies where something suddenly makes sense after years of not even realising it was an issue at all. My biggest flaw, at least to me has always been thinking I'm smarter than I actually am, most days I wake up and already have myself convinced that I can either outsmart or twist my way around people in such a fashion that I could do almost anything I wanted at any given time. Now obviously that isn't true and if that was the 'epiphany' moment I'd be realising I was much less intelligent than I'd ever believed in the first place, I have my days of self doubt just like anyone else and believe it's healthy, necessary even to stay grounded so my giant head fits through doorways. The thing I finally realised is: just because you aren't chasing after the girl doesn't mean you're over her, and just because you don't think about her all the time or love her any more doesn't mean there's not a subconscious remnant thinking maybe something could happen again one day.

Plenty of relationships between then and now, other girls who I sincerely fell in love with and been invested in fully that I put effort into, but this idiotic subconscious thought hanging by a thread was always there. I spent so long convincing myself that I never wanted it to happen again that I believed myself and made it worse, flipping a want to be with someone into a legitimate effort not to be which was equally damaging. I've gone so long without realising I was believing a lie I told myself to make things easier a long time ago, it's an odd feeling of closure and freedom to have worked that out, to get past it when I never really knew it was holding me down in that way.

All this because of silence, I wish I could say thank you.

Spills

Further and further away I feel myself getting from the life and mind I felt I knew. The constant need for something new being chased is almost exhausting and I often ask myself what I'm doing it for, I'm not sure I know the answer any more.

I feel like I know myself but I'm not sure anyone else does, I think I have a tendency to get lost in unrealistic ideas and talk about how I perceive life and what it means, I also offer advice far too much for someone who doesn't know how to lead themself on the worse days, but I feel strong, awake, clearer than ever in ways I never considered viable before, every realisation is a doorway to a knew breed of thought, every experience I have now could positively affect another in the future.

In the process of shedding my old skin of shyness to talk or draw attention to myself in larger social situations when there's not a guitar strapped to me, I pushed a bit too hard and that leaves me talking at times when it's not necessary. We're all constantly in a self improvement loop which can occasionally roll backward as well as forward, submitting to the wills of our personal nostalgia; perhaps your old haircut did shape your forehead better, maybe those glasses your friends said made you look like a Annie Potts from Ghostbusters actually fit well, and the classic "'I can bring the totally mustache back! They're not just for 1980's pedophiles!" These moments are often mistakes, but we all have them and my continuing journey of finding who I want to be in life has been through constant trial and error, pushing everything I possibly can as far as it can go just to see where it ends, I won't get anywhere or do anything at all unless I'm outside my comfort zone and the most serendipitous part of that is I'm aiming that gun of goals straight at falling back into that place once I can secure a life I love.

Right now I have my friends, I have my guitar and I have my freedom, these are the things that matter most. I want a motorbike to give me the freedom of movement, I want a business to be proud of, to be in control of my own life and I want more memories, experiences and moments than I could ever forget over a thousand lifetimes. Every risk is a necessity.

Letter

It's time to stop being so idealistic, it just goes to show when you feel like you have control of things, you're actually looking at it the way you want it to be and hoping the inevitable won't happen.
Realising this situation is out of my hands has hit me pretty hard and more than anything it's shown how good things are for me right now when they aren't so much for others. I wish I could do something, I really do and it's going to be in the back of my head for a long, long time, it's the reason I'm awake at almost three on a slow Thursday morning.

The only thing I care about is having fun, smiling, laughing, having the best memories possible while constantly making better ones. This isn't one of those times, but it puts a point in the future to refer to, an unsure one right now but it's there, something to aim for, to build towards so on that day I can do my best to make up the time where we all lost something and eventually got it back.

Hopefully time actually has some wings to fly with.

Points of Reference

These are all points for myself to look back to and remember who I was at the time. If you can truly write without inhibition about yourself, your fears, worries, strengths and weaknesses, it will give you a better understanding of yourself in that time, and it will give you something for the future to know you improved yourself.

Cogs

I try to think ahead of myself, probably a bit less than I should, obsessing about past mistakes and discrepancies which waste so much time that I could put towards something positive and life affirming? Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what I'd use the extra time for... Alas, letting my mind wonder seems to be something that brings equal amounts of pain and understanding to multiple aspects of my life, which mostly seems like I don't have a grasp with what I'm doing, and currently and quite honestly I look forward and see such uncertainty and change that I can't organise any effort to combat it.

Looking at other people's life, their plans and aspirations, they seem so simple, or at the very least they have an understanding of themselves, I long for that. I feel lost, I feel like I spend my time thinking and focusing on things that everyone else can ignore, or just don't find any interest for. I'm not talking about the 'Meaning of Life' or anything pseudo-meaningful like that, the meaning of my life is to be happy, the meaning of all life is personal to each and every one of us, so there's no need to sit around playing with it. The things that I seem to fixate on now are people's behaviour, and the things that cause certain actions, how I'm supposed to make a life that I'm happy with, and generally how unfathomably huge, stupid complex and fascinating space is. These are just some of the things that circle around in my head that I've pulled down for examples, every single day there's something new to focus on.

I'm guessing the point of the last two paragraphs filled with poorly worded ramblings, is that I'm not struggling to function in some 'Cry for help' fashion, but in some way I'm finding it difficult to live my life day to day and not question simple aspects of living that everyone else seems happy with. I'm sure it all bases itself in a fear that once I finally have something I've been wanting, I'll move on to the next thing and never be completely happy with what I've got.

"It’s all building towards something."

"Sooner or later, I’ll do something with myself and make my mark, but until then whatever I do is not a waste of time, it’s all building towards something."

Is it though? The way I see it, thinking like that is a way to comfort yourself, to let your mind rest on the cluster of facts and thoughts that you have every day that you still haven't done anything with yourself, even though 10 years ago you were constantly being told you could be anything, do anything, live the life you wanted providing you worked for it. What a shame it is that at that point I had no idea what I wanted to do in my life and barely knew what I wanted to do the next day, let alone a few years down the line which ultimately was supposed to be so decisive that you were planning out your entire life with genuine happiness.

If only I understood that your wants change constantly as you age, that you lose people and pull away from people that you once cared, or still care for. How could I be so naive and childish to ignore the idea that while you grow up your brain is what drives you, and it seems to me like what holds me back. I'm not scared of failing, in anything I try, whatever the risk it's probably worth a go once at least, right? While I have that mind state, the world terrifies me, my own mind worries me, I don't enjoy doing things I used to do, and that's change that I can't anticipate so it bothers me.

I spend most of my days laughing, trying to pull whatever bit of amusement or happiness out of it I can, and it seems to work because it keeps me occupied for the time I'm there, but once I'm on my own, I can't escape the feeling in the back of my mind that whatever I do, I'll never be happy. That if I take one path in life, I'll long for the other thing that I didn't choose, that if I settled down with a family and had kids, I'd want to go travelling round the world as some sort of vagrant that only had a guitar, camera and a few possessions to my name. I can't decide what I'll want in my future and I probably won't know until I get there.

I'm worried about preserving parts of my past as memories in case I forget them, I'm scared of losing myself in something that I can't control, that's why I like pictures, I like having physical evidence of memories I love because I worry that one day I won't remember them. I like to write because it leaves behind etchings that maybe I can read in the future and think 'What the hell was I going on about?' and laugh at my past self, seeing how idiotic I was being.

I desperately want to be someone, to do something that matters, and every day I wake up and realise that I thought I'd be doing that a couple of years ago and that I'm still not doing it, and it depresses me. All I pursue in life is to be happy, surely that's the meaning of it all, to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face and to lay down at night knowing your day today was great, and tomorrow will more than likely be the same?