Since my last update, there is just one remnant of my hospital visit: a bill. It will take me quite a while to pay off the thing, but I will do it. I planned to do a lot of traveling this year because with the world ending and everything next year… well, I didn’t really want to travel. (Who needs to die en route when you could be sitting on your couch, you know?)
While I’m making payments on that, and everything else I owe, I won’t be doing as much traveling as I previously thought. And really, if I am being honest, traveling was just an escape route. It doesn’t fix anything. Sure, it’s fun, and exhilarating – and still tempting – but I’d be going to another place being the same me that I had left back in Chicago. And, if by some miracle, I was to have a transcendent experience out of town, it would only be a short while before I settled back into my routine here (see also: NYC April 2010).
I was on my way home the other day, staring into the grey, slushy streets passing by. I started contemplating how people do what they want to do. What motivates them? So often I have heard, “Think yourself to where you want to be. Breathe it. Live it. Do it.” Everything takes work. And I thought to myself, “There are people who do things and there are people who dream of doing things. And I’m tired of dreaming.”
So right now, I’m really trying to focus on how I could make myself and my experience here better. It’s not going to happen overnight – as much as I want it to – but as I explained to a friend of mine, “Confidence comes from within. And I’ve been cowering in a fucking corner under the staircase of a multi-story building.”
There’s a quote by Maya Angelou which has really been resonating with me lately: “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” And I think I’ve been really bitter for a while. Not outwardly, per se. I’ve been angry at myself for my mistakes and misgivings and my shoulda woulda couldas. Instead of experiencing things day by day, I’ve been taking a back seat and just letting things happen. And instead of being angry all the time, I’m going to try and make small but significant changes. That’ll be a journey in itself, and I don’t even have to leave the city for it.
“I started contemplating how people do what they want to do. What motivates them?” I was going through samples on my Kindle last night and came across a book that promises to explain the mystery of exactly that question. I haven’t forked over the $9.99 to buy the book yet, but the answer seems to be just what Rocky Balboa learned in his movie. You have to be hungry for it. If you aren’t hungry for something, there just isn’t the motivation. I’d like to think the book goes into how to create the hunger but I won’t find that out unless I buy it.