How to live messy…
Just reviewing how things have been the past few days, and I like a lot of it, but…
It seems I am always so tame.
There is always this need I have for discipline and structure, and it never works, but I keep trying to put it in place.
Like, I’ve been doing the Oasis and novel work in the office, and adding the yoga into the mix. But, immediately, everything is about trying to make it very clean. Work on Oasis for X hours, then do yoga, then have lunch, then it’s all novel from then until later. Then, I’m home for dinner, and unwinding.
It just seems like I’m some retiree.
I need to find a way to be messy. I need to decide that I can make a paragraph perfect yet tonight and down a Red Bull to make sure I see it through. Wake up and see what the hell happened.
I mean, Bright Eyes playing a late concert shouldn’t rattle me. I don’t have to wake up early. I didn’t have to go to bed after the show. For a brief window, I can just do whatever, whenever.
I shouldn’t know what Jack bauer did tonight. I shouldn’t know Oprah’s running repeats this week. I shouldn’t know that Sanjaya made the Top 12 on American Idol.
I’m trying to figure it out, this compulsion to organize and plan and schedule and tie the days up with a pretty bow. Could I have done more today? The answer is always yes.
I just fear that passion and fire don’t arrive on schedule. You can’t order up inspiration for tomorrow between 10 a.m. and noon. Life ultimately needs to be accommodating and messy and finds its own path. I mean, I didn’t have iced tea with dinner because I was eating a little late, and didn’t want it to keep me up, so that I could go to bed early, so that I could wake up early, so that I could put “the plan” into effect again.
Knowing what really isn’t the solution doesn’t point out what should be, though.
Maybe it is specifically working against my comfort zone. Go to a noisy coffeehouse and find a way to make that energy work for me. Packing up my laptop and some clothes and heading to Thailand again. I keep saying I don’t want to be one of those people who gets all into rituals, like I have to go to Asia to write books and such, but… whatever works is fine, really.
I think the rented office thing… eh, it’s a pretense. It is what I really need to learn how to do without all the hurdles. It proves that when I’m not home I can avoid the distractions of home. It’s not learning anything, really.
I mean, it’s the sand that makes the pearl. The imperfection, the struggle.
What’s the point of ditching corporate America if I keep following its strange conventions?
But it leaves the larger question remaining: How can you learn to live messy?
