05 November 2011

Contender Blues

The bubble popped and I snapped awake.  Years, gone, and where did I wake up?

I had one of those moments today, of ennui spiced with dislocation, and a dash of mild anxiety.  It was induced by a chance encounter via email.  The email came from a professional networking website and it was chock full of catalysts and memory triggers in the form of "what-have-you-done-since..." blurbs.  The past come back to nag me.

The feeling of being underwater has been intense in the nearly four weeks since I was let go from the job.  Some days I wander around immersed in the sensation.  I put it aside most of the day, as I had my darling daughter  with me, and it was good.

But that email brought it all back.  I scrolled through the page, looking at all the people who had been somewhere and done something and it was at the end of it that the bubble popped.  I started as if awoken while sleepwalking.  It took me a brief pause to collect myself to remind me that I was on the couch staring at the laptop screen.  I was home.

Home, and wondering just what it is that I had been doing all these years.  Picking through the battered scrap heap of my career life to try and piece together that which I could point to and say: I Did This, And I Am Wonderful.  The pickings, it seemed to me, were too thin.

Leaning back into the sofa cushions all I could think was that I need to get my stuff together.  I need to do something worthwhile and soon, as I have metaphorically been sawing off the limb behind myself.  Its only a matter of time before that limb cracks.  I need to hurry.

I need to rev the engine, pop the clutch and damn the torpedoes.  I need to get somewhere, fast.

7 comments:

  1. I'm hoping you don't mind me offering advice.

    I see you listed reinvention in your label section...I've always thought your photography portraits are stunning.

    Would there be a chance to expand your inner Avedon?

    Wishing you great things!

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  2. I get it. The goals, the striving to the next level, the accumulation of stuff for your CV. But that said, Dude, you are enough, just as you are.

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  3. And like a pack of dominos, this post has now made me think about the same --

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  4. I would have to say that these things can be slightly depressing when you look back, I know that is the case with myself, the best thing we all can do is not look backwards but forward.

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  5. the world is in far too great a hurry for honor and glory. do u play piano?

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  6. Your past nags you?? Mine haunts me, all groaning and moaning and rattling chains. And yes I am subject to bouts of ennui too (that's a funny little word, "on-wee"). It happens to the best of us. Throw your pity party, then suck it up and pull up your big boy pants and deal with it! Life sucks sometimes, but apathy sucks worse! Sometimes the reason all the doors are closed is because the right one is waiting to be opened and you never would have opened it if the others hadn't been closed. You have a poetic soul and a beautiful eye for phtoography. I'm sure you will land on your feet. :)

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"Let your laws come undone
Don't suffer your crimes
Let the love in your heart take control..."


-'The Hair Song', by Black Mountain

Tell me what is in your heart...