It's been a while and I find myself in the midst of fighting my two greatest enemies. The first is that muddling haze which seems to descend upon my mind and keep me from thinking clearly. Seriously, I've found it hard to even get anything done, even at work. I would stare at the computer screen wondering what the hell I was supposed to be doing and begin to contemplate my usefulness as a member of the human race.
The second is an illness all too familiar to those of my generation. At work I recently had to sit through an entire presentation on the differences between “Generation i”, the tech-savvy generation, and the hard working, dirt in nails, “Baby Boomer” generation. After I watched the presentation I felt like I owed it to the first person I saw over 40 to apologize for destroying what's left of the planet after global warming runs its course. But I diverge, that most familiar of maladies is just plain laziness. The problem I have with performing a task, let's dub it Task A, is that I just can't bring myself to actually do “Task A” without a good reason to do Task A. So this leads to me sitting down for a while to ponder why I need to bring myself to do Task A in the first place, all the while becoming more confused and lost within the labyrinth of my own thoughts.
After contemplating why I should do Task A for about thirty minutes, I realize that I'm getting nothing done, by this point I can't even remember why I ever wanted to do Task A in the first place. Despite this, something still nags at me about Task A, reminding me that I'm a complete moron. As a compromise I decide to perform Task B which, while being a lot less productive, is a hell of a lot more entertaining. By the time I'm done with Task B, I've either completely forgotten about Task A or it is too late to do anything about it.
And so life continued for most of the winter and a good chunk of the spring. Yeah I did stuff: threw some kicking parties, met some killer blokes, took some vacation to visit family in Denver and friends in Cedar Rapids, and busted a chill on occasion, but I didn't really realize how much I was letting slide until I took my trip down to Texas last weekend.
Whenever I go back to campus it always seems like time and space warps. In some ways it always seemed like I was gone for too long, but also not long enough. As if I'd thought my last time there was just a dream I had awoken from long ago, but when I step into a dorm room once again reality shifts and I realize that my time away was more of a dream then my time in Texas. I didn't get that feeling when I came down for graduation, sure it was all too familiar yet very different all the same, but it was somewhat vindicating to realize that I had moved on past the struggles that once bound me to that place.
My short visit reminded me that sometimes I can be too hard on myself. It was good to be in good company and be forced to break my spell of loneliness and self-withdrawal for a time. All too often I was faced with the daunting question of “so remember when you said you were going to do _____, how is that coming?” I would then have to awkwardly explain that I hadn't really done much of _____, all the while trying to recall what it was I had done instead. Despite that, I was glad I was able to be there to re-unite with friends who were about to head their various ways across the nation and a few friends who came back from various parts of the world for the same reason.
In some ways it reminded me of who I was, and gave me hope that I might still make something of it in the end. So in a nutshell, I finally broke through the mental fog which kept me from figuring out how to work a keyboard in such a way as to make a post and a couple of beers and encouraging words made me realize that there is more to life than being comfortably lazy.
Cheers!
