Have Nails, Don't Have a Hammer

Instead of writing this morning, I read a book and fell asleep.

Instead of writing this afternoon, I took photographs and looked for a job.

Instead of writing this evening,  I fled the house and went for a bike ride.

In short, I feel as if I accomplished nothing.  My head is bursting with thoughts, ideas, tirades, screeds, dialogues, poems, outrage, anxiety, resignation, joy, fear...and I can't get it to settle down.  Everyone and his brother is telling me I need to write every day.  This creates anxiety when I fail to write.  Rather, when I fail to write anything of consequence.  This I haven't felt motivated to do because of my life situation, and because I keep reading amazing, wonderful things that others have written, and I think to myself..."It's been done."  I know, I know, I'm supposed to disregard that notion.  I'm supposed to believe that I am the Shizznit, my voice matters, I'm interesting, I have a "unique" perspective, blah, blah blah...

That may be true.  I cannot trust myself to offer an objective, realistic assessment of the writing I do.  Often it's too close and I fail to spot the flaws.  Other times I suffer from the old problem of not wanting to risk rejection, because these are my ideas.  Ideas are important to me.  Perhaps I place too much stock in the ideas being the measure of the person, and this is the root of the problem.

I once told myself, back when I was consumed by the brashness of youth, that without ideas, I am nothing.  Without ideas I have nothing to differentiate myself from slime-molds, rocks or chimpanzees.  The body is a meat suit that exists to transport the brain and manifest its wishes and reactions.  It is the mind that is the repository of everything that matters.  The vault that holds the ideas.

The crisis: I have relied on ideas for so long, trusting that I would know what I am doing, and look where I am.  Jobless, lonely and wondering what in the hell I am going to do next.

Because I don't know. I have no ideas.

There is a line in a song* by the Avett Brothers that says "Decide what to be and go be it".  The phrase has been swirling around in my head for days now.  It sounds so simple.  I wish I could decide what to be.

For me to decide what to be, I have to return to the ideas I have had and have been having about myself, and what I want.  It pains me, makes me anxious, to sift through the ideas in my head and be excited by what I find.  The excitement is great.  There is, however, no trust.  My notions of who I was, who I wanted to be, have been tossed out the window by what has come to pass.  What once was light has become weight.

Tonight I sit here with my laptop, pounding the keys in an attempt to shed some weight.  There are many things I want to be, many things I think I want to be, but what of those are the things I need to be?

I'm clutching a handful of nails, and cursing my lack of a hammer.  Tell me, who do I want to be?

*Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise from I and Love and You.