every morning, i start my day with a great, fantastic, life-changing idea.
"i can make my life so much better if i just..."
every morning that thought ends differently.
usually, it becomes some sort of romantic gesture: "... asked her out," "... sent her flowers," "... called her," “…talked to her,” “…told her i have a huge embarrassing 12-year old crush on her,” (ie. a crush a 12-year old would have, not a crush that has lasted 12 years), etc.
occasionally, it becomes about aiming my life in a different direction: “…studied art” “…studied design” “…played music for real” “…made movies” “… lived in london for a year” "...wrote a play", and so on.
whereas it’s easier to brush off the latter category as just whimsical thinking outside the realm of possibility or practicality, the girl-related thoughts seem at least… plausible.
either way, the outcome is always the same:
by the time i finish breakfast, the idea will be a vague curiousity. by noon, it will have become an impossibility. once night comes around, the same thought will have seemed so crazy that nighttime-me will have reprimanded morning-me for ever thinking it at all.
(i’m omitting super late-night daydreaming here; nothing good happens after 2am, kids)
here's the problem:
is it the idea itself that was crazy and wrong to begin with, and it just took me the whole day to realize it?
or, is it that the idea is apt (and that it could indeed make my life “so much better”), but it only seems possible when one foot is still in the dream world?
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7 comments:
I really liked this post, fo' the record.
For me, I think it's the opposite. I wake up, ready to face the day. I'm either off to work or off to school. Either way, a healthy dose of reality.
By my first break, my mind has started to drift a bit. A quick call to my mom or to friends gets me goin'. What kind of adventure am I going to get myself involved in next? Should do the whatsitwhatsit? Should I whateverwhatever?
By the time I get home, I'm ready to buy the 60-day Greyhound North America All Access pass.
It's once I wake up that I realize I'm just going to head off to work again.
Now that I think about it, the end of the day does sometimes make me stop dreaming of not-so-far-off lands. Once I'm out and about, I realize that there really isn't anywhere else I'd like to be. Sure, I should have asked that girl out/gone to that concert/accepted candy from that stranger, but in the end, Montréal suits me just fine.
These days, my first thought is nearly "AUGHFUCK why didn't I go to bed earlier?!" with "I hope I hung up my work pants last night" and "What are the odds it's a snow day?" on its heels.
Regrets are life's way of revealing our preferences to us so that we can make more informed rational choices the next time. So, fuck it. Send her flowers. If you regret it even more than not sending them, you learned something.
i agree.
living life with "no regrets" is naive and short sighted.
if you don't regret anything, then you don't learn anything, its pretty simple. so don't go out and be like "oh fuck, lets think of all the things i've ever regretted them and we can fix them. go" but more like "oh man, that didn't work out. i won't do make the same mistake again". that isn't "no regrets", its just thinking critically.
that's another vote from me.
if you know me well enough, a phrase i'll often throw around is "no failure, only feedback". it's what b. said.
on the point of ideas: none of them are impossible. you are in control of your life and you can do whatever you want. just say yes.
write all your ideas down onto a list and sort them by how much you want to go through with them.
and then do them. one by one. start with the small ones. it's like a muscle. you have to build it up. make a commitment to yourself, grab your balls and jump in.
if you can't, grab a friend and tell them to slap you until you do it (provided this is something you actually want to be doing)
Don't tell the friend to grab your balls though. (Unless you wake up thinking "I can make my life better if I just convince my friends to grab my balls.")
depends on the friend.
i should know.
weaselbag: up until about two weeks ago, i had no clue what you were talking about. since then though, i have settled into being bored and frustrated by my job, and know exactly what you mean.
(the minute i get out of work though, that feeling of desperation and the urge to do something new and crazy vanishes, and i realize i'm fine the way things are... is that good or bad?)
also, the security word verification is "feckit".
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