I hear the whispers in my head that tell me the things I need to do. Do the dishes, wash your clothes, read that essay, spruce up the place, start cooking, get some fresh air. Survive, in so many words. And a lot of it goes unheeded and undone. And yet I survive. I stay out of harm's way and I try to build something for tomorrow while leaving today only a partial wreck. I avoid stress, I stay clean, I keep my priorities intact. And I survive.
A certain portion of every institution's resources go towards the goal of that institution's self-preservation. Collapse of an institution amounts to failure of this self-preserving portion against a threat; internal collapse simply means that the fatal threat had resided within the organization. With most institutions, this crucial proportion - this "army", if you will - is large, for without self-preservation, an institution cannot fulfill its essential functions. Without an army, an institution is simply waiting for the slightest change in the winds to bring the institution to non-existence or to forced, on-the-fly adaptation.
This is true for institutions and true also for individuals. And self-preservation is a strong impulse for the mass of healthy individuals, of which I'll humbly count myself. And yet - and this is the kicker - I have a seriously distorted instinct of short-term self-preservation, to the extent that I'm incredibly fearful - paranoid, even - of deliberately "wasting" time with low-yield, essential long-term things. My army seems to be dedicated to maximizing the intrinsic value of every moment, pushing sensory feelers in every direction for the next, most potent stimulation. And the principal consequence of this is that I'm in a bit of a funk. And the essential textures and timbres of this funk are well-acquainted to me. I don't clean very often because who would waste time with something so trivial? You can't hear a symphony while you vacuum! And this impulse works to the detriment of long-term self-preservation. I go off the grid, avoid stress, create comfort and flourishing short-term environments... and people worry about me, I gain a bit of weight, my room is not clean, and my laundry doesn't get done. Subjectively, I feel happy, I feel right, but it's not a sustainable existence.
This is my challenge, and, with the most wavering of attention spans always by nature looking for the next stimulation, it's not an insubstantial challenge. And maybe the trick for me is to note that the goals I get the most benefit towards when I'm in this mode - artistic input and artistic output - are distorted and lessened somewhat by the one-track nature of the simple life. I may have more vivid dreams and read more vivid horror, but it's at the expense of a more vivid reality and the natural horrors of a life well-spent (this clause is how you know you're reading Pearls of Mystery, heh). And, while "read a lot of good stuff" is the single best piece of advice you can give to writer's block, and in sheer mechanical terms there's almost nothing better (besides "write a lot of bad stuff after reading a lot of good stuff"). But "live a life full of complicated and ambivalent experiences" is probably even better. Music is great, but I'm sure it would be better if I were on a campus all day, or talking to more people about bands.
So maybe it's time to live a little, which, if you've been following me so far, means in the short-term sense to die a little. That spark of life in me is not so much right now just a candle of hope and inspiration as it is an overpowered torch to the future, too strong and too unfocused. I need to take that fire and apply it to the bigger and the longer-term questions of life, not just how to write that next piece that five people will read. No, instead, I need to use that fire to rocket myself into the sky, and too close to the sun, super-heating my wings before diving back to Earth as ash, spreading my ashes among the sea of opportunity that will flow to different shores all across the world, finally then reconstituting myself as the world on fire, a phoenix of self-actualization. And then, as that phoenix, burning a path across that marvelous sky, I can find a cafe with a Wi-Fi connection and write a piece about it that five people will read.
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