People who believe in souls will sometimes say that bodies are merely vessels for souls to inhabit. From that point of view, the human body can seem inconsequential. It doesn’t matter what you look like; who you are and what you do is far more contingent on thought and action than on skin color and outward gender. While this is true, the body does have significant importance in that it supports all of the higher functions we wish to pursue.
People are not at their best when they don’t take care of themselves. Oh, they might seem more productive due to the sheer dint of hours logged for corporate record-keeping, but they’re probably dying a little more inside because of those hours and the workload and the barrage of requests, corrections, and rejection that is part and parcel of life in a cubicle. Couple this with sub-par nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle, and things can go downhill pretty quickly.
I’m guilty of this myself. When your therapist comments on how exhausted you look, something definitely needs to be done. I’m going to try and sleep more, exercise more, and worry less. It can be difficult to keep things in perspective and not get drawn into a cycle where I work too hard or too long and leave myself insufficient time and energy to write, plan for the future, or get my non-work ducks in a row. I struggle with it daily, and I can’t imagine such struggles are that great for my circulatory or digestive systems.
You have to take time to take care of your body. It’s the only one you get. It is what you make of it, and you can make it as great as you want. So get out there and do it! Take some time for you today. You deserve it.
I am exhausted. Today’s been one of those days where time seems to stretch out like taffy in front of me, and while the amount seems small from one angle, it’s incredibly long from where I am right now. Tomorrow will be different, and better. But for now, here’s an entry from a few years ago that I feel still applies to me today.
There’s a picture of me out there, and I wish I could post it here with these words. It’s of me, at around 8 years old, proudly showing off my Transformers backpack. Optimus Prime, in all of his 80s glory, is ready to stand up and protect my books and Trapper Keepers from anybody trying to subvert my freedom, which is the right of all sentient beings. I knew Prime wasn’t real, but I believed his philosophy to be true.
As you can imagine, I got bullied as a kid.
My peers made fun of me. I actually got beat up once. I probably caused concern from my parents at more than one point. Somewhere along the way I tried to dial down the behavior that was causing such strife, in the name of fitting in. I never really did, and the behavior remains to this day. At this point, it probably isn’t going anywhere.
These days, though, I wonder why ‘fitting in’ is such a big deal.
The people who we remember, the ones we admire, aren’t people who fit in. Galileo, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Nikola Tesla, Rosa Parks, Issac Asmiov, Gary Gygax – these are people who refused to fit into the molds cast by the world around them. They sought change. They embraced their natures. And we love them for it.
Why do we demand so much less of ourselves? Are we just lazy?
Let’s face it, fitting in is easy. It requires almost no effort. Just do what everybody else around you is doing. Buzz in time with the rest of the swarm. Contribute to the overall productivity that will bluesky that turnkey solution. There is no ‘i’ in team.
Because they’re all hanging out in imagination. Innovation. Initiative. Plenty of ‘i’s there.
The problem is that imaginative, innovative people might not always channel that energy effectively. There are lots of mixed signals out there that can muck up one’s internal compass. We look for immediate payoffs. Benefits with minimum investment. Bigger bang for our bucks. To get them, we settle. We compromise. We take the safe road.
There isn’t anything wrong with this, in and of itself. It’s good to have certainty. Especially if you’re in a situation where you need to concern yourself with the wellbeing of others as well as yourself, you need to find a middle ground between dangling by your fingertips and keeping your feet on the ground. The nice thing about not being alone in this is the potential for someone to watch out for you, or you for them, as you make your way towards that goal, inch by inch, one foothold at a time.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time building LEGOs. And not always with instructions. In fact, I probably spent more time digging my fingers into the big plastic bin, fishing out blocks and assembling them by the blueprints in my head rather than going by established plans. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that sort of initiative. I started doing what other people did and were successful at, rather than seeking my own path. I followed well-trod trails around the mountain, rather than looking up and figuring out how I’m going to get all the way up that thing. I’d take a few steps up the incline but then back down when it got hard, because those trails are much easier to follow.
I forgot what it meant to be a kid while still occasionally acting like one.
I’d lament lost time but not consider how better to spend it. I’d rage against my situation and take no steps to change it. I’d experience rejection and loss without using the motivation it was handing me. Kids at their best don’t just cry over scraped knees. They let the pain out, wipe their faces and get up to try again.
At some point, if you’re on top of things and really want to hold onto that initiative, you’ll fail enough that you’ll realize why you’re failing, and instead will begin to succeed. You can’t get there without failing, though. Learning to ride a bike means falling a few times. Ditto traversing the monkey bars. The first few sandcastles you build are going to crumble before your eyes, possibly before you even finish. What matters isn’t necessarily the scrapes, the bruises, the wipeouts. What matters is what we do after they happen.
It’s okay to fail. It’s okay not to fit in. We have to find a way to make the most of those failures, to make not fitting in matter. When we do, the successes mean more, not just because of the failures that lead to it but because we can take full ownership of it. We had the crazy idea. We struggled to make it come to life. We were aware that we’d get odd looks and skepticism. We got to the finish line anyway, and something new and exciting is the result.
That’s reason enough to abandon the set paths. It’s why we remember those luminaries I mentioned. And it’s why, at this point, I’m probably never going to ‘grow up’.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Philadelphia. There will always be a piece of me out here on the east coast of the United States. But I have spent years, close to a decade now, kicking around the suburbs north of the city trying to find the right niche. Most of the time I’ve just been happy to be employed and keep a roof over my head. But over the last couple years, the feeling has grown that I am stagnating. And stagnation leads to frustration and loneliness, two emotions that I have a great deal of difficulty controlling.
I don’t want to take anything away from the people I’ve lived with and near since I moved back here from the western part of the state. There are people who have been instrumental in helping me keep my head above water, friends that have helped me see my potential, and individuals who have been behind me no matter what. I’ll never be able to repay the debt I owe to all of you, and I’m not going to forget you when I leave.
But I will be leaving. I’m moving to Seattle in August.
I believe that change is good for the soul. I have spent most of the aforementioned decade not changing all that much. I’ve been focused mostly on immediate concerns and the requirements and desires of others. My family would be the first to say that for years I’ve struggled with a ‘martyr complex’, often putting aside what I’m doing or what I want to try and make things better for other people. I haven’t been believing in myself as much as I’ve believed in the lives and companies to which I’ve contributed. Standing up for myself is something that does not come as easily to me as it should. Fighting for something I want, that I truly believe in for my own sake, tends to get filed away in my head as ‘selfish’ and thus a negative thing. However, I’ve come to learn that if I want to make any headway in this life, if I want to improve where I am and work towards the goals I have in mind for myself, I have to be selfish. I have to stand up for those things. I have to grow, and change, and move.
Why Seattle, you might ask?
The opportunities for me to write as my profession are better. The job market in general is an improvement. The saturation of friends is staggering. I’ll be closer to more game developers, who may be looking for writers. The mountains are lovely. The ocean is beautiful. I have walked its streets, and felt more at home than I ever have in Philadelphia. The coffee, the food, the events, the music – I could go on.
I’m posting a countdown here. It’s the approximate time at which my father and I will hit the road together.
I’ll spare you wonderful, patient people the sordid details of what’s going on with me and how I’m feeling, at least when it comes to this blog. I may do one of my more in-depth, personal pieces over on Tumblr later today. We’ll see.
The salient information, here, is that there is no cure for bipolar disorder. You don’t just ‘get over it’. It can be resisted, and its triggers recognized before they inform full-blown episodes. But it’s a part of the victim’s life, and its influence can creep into the scene without much warning.
Case in point: my sleep schedule has been extremely odd lately, and energy has been sporadic. I’m pretty sure I know why, and I’ll be taking steps to correct it, but right now it’s a matter of getting through the day and meeting my deadlines to the best of my ability. I have dealt with this before, and this will not be the last time, either.
My current hope is that I can make it through the next couple days, reestablish decent sleeping habits, recover some of my energy, and avoid making things worse. I’m also reminding myself that I have a lot of things to be thankful for: I’m in a position where I can plan for a better future, I have a very strong support network, and I have wonderful, patient readers who are more interested in my successes than my failures.
Unless something truly freaky happens in the very near future, spring has finally arrived on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The slight sunburn on my right side is evidence that the sun is shining out as strong as ever. So now that we’re all shaking off the effects of hibernation and getting to feel the soil under our feet again except for snow – what’s next?
I’m not a small person in terms of how tall I am and how much I weigh. Large objects can be difficult to get moving, but once motion has begun it’s just as hard to stop. So it feels in my life currently. I have activities I want to pick up or resume, but I’m finding it difficult, especially first thing in the morning, to get myself moving. On the other hand, things are in motion that I am either unable or disinclined to stop. I won’t go into laborious detail at this time – personal stuff is what I have a Tumblr for, and some things simply need to be kept under wraps. But I do feel like I have some good forward momentum going, for the first time in a long time.
Change is never easy. We get comfortable. We nestle ourselves into a place that feels like we belong, It feels good to have stability, predictability, safety – to know that tomorrow will, in most ways, be a continuation of today.
The paradoxical thing is, change is healthy. We all go through it, sometimes from one day to the next, and it helps us grow. Change is always happening, whether we want it to or not, Adapting to change is a necessary life skill, and making change happen is one of the most empowering things we can do.
There’s a lot more I’d like to say on the subject. I simply can’t. In some cases, I don’t want to put carts before horses; in others, there’s too much uncertainty to weigh in. The bottom line is, there is momentum happening, and with spring arriving, it’s only going to increase.
