I often feel like I’ve lost my voice, but I really never found my voice. I thought I did. In my thirties I yelled with that voice at whoever I thought could understand it, but I really alienated more souls than I helped, even though all I was doing was trying to help…in my own little version of philosophizing with a hammer, but with healing through creativity. I was confident in that philosophically creative excursion because everyone always said that one finds their voice in their thirties. The realization that little to no one was paying attention just made me yell louder because I thought that was it; now or never.
I struggled with that for over a decade, until I finally rested… much closer to never than now….. now… I feel like never would be a vast improvement to the lack of inspiration I feel. Right after I posted about probate being over and my roadtrip back to Nebraska… a month and a half ago… I wrote a post about a huge paradigm shift in my creative equipment, but quickly reverted it to draft because I felt stupid. I used to put so much importance on being loyal to Canon for over 30 years, and switching my creative flow over to Sony felt way more important than it actually is… especially when what I hope to do with it seems like a distant dream. I’m getting too old for dreams.
Hiding that post, and realizing that my voice should be focused on way more important things, kicked me back into creative apathy. What is the actual point? Maybe I’m still stuck in that Bufo existential crisis? Maybe this is what never feels like, and I have completely missed the opportunity of now? I just want to accomplish something significant, something my kids and grandkids can be proud of, but I am far from excited about it, and no one around me seems to be either. Maybe that’s just the energy of middle America?
I wanted to do a whole video in San Diego with “Maya” and I talking about quitting our lives and living on the road. I had the whole thing planned out with a voiceover talking about the magical and exotic land of… *camera opens to us sitting on camping chairs in grandma’s garage*… Chula Vista, California. That didn’t happen, like nothing really happened on the road like I planned it out. There wasn’t time to really do anything amongst the constant stimulation and movement.
Living in the now with my family, and appreciating the now of my family, was kind of the nail in the now or never coffin. And I feel like enough dirt has been shoveled on said coffin that my nails are raw from scratching at the Edgar Allan Poe metaphor. That didn’t make any sense, though taphophobia beautifully describes how I’m feeling creatively.
What am I doing, going on and on about my own experience? How selfishly silly of me. The whole reason why we’re here is because of the girls and their desire to experience school, which we couldn’t do in the state of absurdly strict rules and regulations cleverly masked as liberal freedoms. The girls are absolutely thriving in school, thanks to my partner’s homeschooling preparation, though there were some pretty rough learning curve moments in the first couple weeks where the world may or may not have ended just about every night.
V is getting into futbol. Both the girls are learning piano. A cat adopted us, named St. Thomas of Tabasco… at least that’s what I call him. With school and my new boring job, the adventures are few, and the creative accomplishment fewer. I still don’t feel like there’s time for anything. Maybe that’s just what getting old feels like? Maybe everything will slow back down in ten years when the girls whirl off into their individual human experiences? Maybe there will always be something making us feel like we don’t really have enough time?
To quote the immortal Spiros, “You work, and then you die.” Work for me looks like writing this while sitting on the back of a FedEx bulk truck behind an Omaha Target, waiting for a pick-up window to open. Not nearly as romantic as living in an old movie theatre, but there is some poetic ring to the irony of this existence. Sadly, there are probably only three people on the planet who can truly appreciate that I work for Federal Express, and we bank at Wells Fargo.
That certainly makes me smile most days, which is all any of us can really wish for in this life. I really do plan on posting more than once every couple months. I really do. Creative accomplishment is in the doing, not the talking about doing, and when you have grown accustomed to the doing not being did, doing the doing is difficult… regardless of why we’re here… and regardless of what we’re doing.
