chris write more
Many long and arduous months have passed since I last posted here... For those who have eagerly awaited a new post and some fresh writing to stretch itself out here in this virtual space, I thank you for your patience and persistence in your faithful, perhaps sporadic, visits to my unchanging blog. I remember all my good intentions, when I wrote last January, about how I would update more frequently and use this space to hone my writing. But they just seem to dissolve into the ether of things to do and scattered living...
I tried, shortly after my last post, to write something new. I was on the fourth floor at Millenium Library at the computer banks nestled along the back wall among the stacks of non-fiction. It was a Sunday afternoon, March 18th, and I was feeling unsettled trying to move on in my day. The school season was almost finished, my final semester of classes, reading thick and heady volumes of philosophy and theory and literature, and I was consequently swimming in minor indecision about what should come next, wondering what kind of effect my personal, relational, emotional constitution were having on my "professional" life (which, up to this point, had been a student's life, but was soon to become the direction of whatever came next--whether writing or community work or stopgap work or a full-blown career). That Sunday morning, I'd spent over a leisurely breakfast with a friend that left me feeling profoundly unsettled about my values and my role in life. And as I sat down to write, these thoughts bubbled in my mind, and this is what I wrote...
There are many people in the world, and in among all those people there are only a handful with which we are able to establish a lasting bond. If you look at your life, you can probably name them--the ones that linger in your memory and remind you that you feel a little less alone when they are around: in many cases, these are the people we marry; the people we tell our secrets to; the ones we talk with late into the night. They are the people for which we can give no account of except that we find them easy to be around because they simply understand us. But there always comes a time of decision--a point at which we realize that we need to work at that connection if it is to hold. There are fears and misgivings at these points...
And with that, I felt the burning in my soul, felt the restless spirit rear up--
I saved the draft of a post that would never be finished and I went to find a pack of cigarettes... It'd been almost 2 months since I quit smoking and I felt that I had a pretty good handle on not doing it. I felt like I knew my trigger points and how to deal with cravings and what to do when I felt unreasonably drawn to them... But in this moment, it all failed me, I didn't care anymore, and I beelined out of the library and crossed Donald to CityPlace to find a pack of Number 7's. I stood in the courtyard behind the library, the banks of snow surrounding me, and I drew heavily on the familiar addiction, toying with thoughts of fate and absolution of responsibility and divine providence. Perhaps I simply was a smoker. I looked up at the sheet of windows that cover the southern facing library windows, seeing the reflection off and up into the atmosphere, and I pondered the direction of my life...
Lately, I've been having an almost constant crisis of purpose. I wonder what I should be doing and whether it's selfish ambition or my actual calling, whether it's simply a hobby or very deeply my vocation. And how much can I--should I--possibly sacrifice for it? It seems that whoever it is that I'm becoming follows directly from all the choices and decisions and investments I make now. That is, whoever it is that I will be begins right now. Begins in the ripple of this present moment...
Whether it needs to be said or not, I gave up smoking three days later. It was easier the second time--the habit was already cracked. But I was left wondering, perhaps floundering, for a few days (maybe weeks, arguably months)... There's still so many questions, still the usual struggles over how to spend my time, my money, my emotions... And in the end, I come back to the thought that the person I am becoming begins right now. In this moment, in this present heartbeat, I am choosing who it is that I will be. In this moment, I am becoming.
So please bear with me...
I tried, shortly after my last post, to write something new. I was on the fourth floor at Millenium Library at the computer banks nestled along the back wall among the stacks of non-fiction. It was a Sunday afternoon, March 18th, and I was feeling unsettled trying to move on in my day. The school season was almost finished, my final semester of classes, reading thick and heady volumes of philosophy and theory and literature, and I was consequently swimming in minor indecision about what should come next, wondering what kind of effect my personal, relational, emotional constitution were having on my "professional" life (which, up to this point, had been a student's life, but was soon to become the direction of whatever came next--whether writing or community work or stopgap work or a full-blown career). That Sunday morning, I'd spent over a leisurely breakfast with a friend that left me feeling profoundly unsettled about my values and my role in life. And as I sat down to write, these thoughts bubbled in my mind, and this is what I wrote...
There are many people in the world, and in among all those people there are only a handful with which we are able to establish a lasting bond. If you look at your life, you can probably name them--the ones that linger in your memory and remind you that you feel a little less alone when they are around: in many cases, these are the people we marry; the people we tell our secrets to; the ones we talk with late into the night. They are the people for which we can give no account of except that we find them easy to be around because they simply understand us. But there always comes a time of decision--a point at which we realize that we need to work at that connection if it is to hold. There are fears and misgivings at these points...
And with that, I felt the burning in my soul, felt the restless spirit rear up--
I saved the draft of a post that would never be finished and I went to find a pack of cigarettes... It'd been almost 2 months since I quit smoking and I felt that I had a pretty good handle on not doing it. I felt like I knew my trigger points and how to deal with cravings and what to do when I felt unreasonably drawn to them... But in this moment, it all failed me, I didn't care anymore, and I beelined out of the library and crossed Donald to CityPlace to find a pack of Number 7's. I stood in the courtyard behind the library, the banks of snow surrounding me, and I drew heavily on the familiar addiction, toying with thoughts of fate and absolution of responsibility and divine providence. Perhaps I simply was a smoker. I looked up at the sheet of windows that cover the southern facing library windows, seeing the reflection off and up into the atmosphere, and I pondered the direction of my life...
Lately, I've been having an almost constant crisis of purpose. I wonder what I should be doing and whether it's selfish ambition or my actual calling, whether it's simply a hobby or very deeply my vocation. And how much can I--should I--possibly sacrifice for it? It seems that whoever it is that I'm becoming follows directly from all the choices and decisions and investments I make now. That is, whoever it is that I will be begins right now. Begins in the ripple of this present moment...
Whether it needs to be said or not, I gave up smoking three days later. It was easier the second time--the habit was already cracked. But I was left wondering, perhaps floundering, for a few days (maybe weeks, arguably months)... There's still so many questions, still the usual struggles over how to spend my time, my money, my emotions... And in the end, I come back to the thought that the person I am becoming begins right now. In this moment, in this present heartbeat, I am choosing who it is that I will be. In this moment, I am becoming.
So please bear with me...
posted by chris at 14:07
1 Comments:
good work pal, welcome back.
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