It's been a while since I entered anything in this diary o' mine. Last week's sort of doesn't count. It wasn't spurred by some existential angst or some traumatic I-can't-sleep-over-the-memory memory... and I think it shows in the writing. At least, as I was putting the words down, they felt clunky, poor representatives of the experience I was attempting to describe.
Even these words here, now, are dull and slow to emerge from my mind. Maybe it's the keyboard I'm working on that makes me feel like each letter has to be hammered into place before moving on. But I think... the reason I'm writing this now... is to explain why I haven't been needing to write entries as of late. Not make excuses about wierd PC keyboards.
A friend once said, "There's nothing worse than a lazy writer." I'm wondering if there's a related statement that I can make right now: "There's nothing worse than a happy writer."
Because I'm happy.
Oh, it's not a joyful kind of happy. I'm not skipping anywhere, singing songs or smiling at breezes of nothing. I'm not jumping out of bed to tackle life like a soul-full of nitroglycerin, as Ray Bradbury challenged. I'm just... happy.
Content might be a better word. A few weeks ago, maybe even a month ago, I came to terms with a few things that have been haunting me for a long while. Oddly enough, the resolution came outside of writings, outside of this diary, so there's no sign of its progress, though I think I could map it out, and may attempt to do so in this entry.
Where to start, though?
It's fundamentally a two-parter. Let me see if I can reconstruct the thinking... I don't actually recall which piece came first...
What started it was my blunt realization that I was fundamentally not happy. This had begun to dawn on me around the time I wrote the Unreal Tournament entry -- it bothered me that the peak of my pride seemed to be revolving around my success at a *computer game*. Not that I felt I shouldn't be enjoying the game or taking pride at my progress. Just that, philosophically speaking, there's so much more to life!
Duh.
I said to myself, "Self, why am I not happy? What is really getting me down? Or, more importantly, what makes me feel good?"
The last was easily answered. The love of a woman. Nothing has ever compared to the love I've shared, earned, expressed...
Now, I knew better than to think I ought to run off and get "a woman" to solve all my problems. That's not the point, nor is it a good idea on a billion different levels. However...
I *was* working on it. There were (and are) several women in whom I'm particularly interested, attracted to, etc -- read back a few entries to see about them. I think I've been going about it in a relatively healthy manner -- though I need to work on my direct approach, but I think that's the point of almost all those entries -- but something about what was going on (or not going on) was not satisfying me.
And then I got an email, from one of the ladies I had particularly high hopes for. I won't say I was shot down -- I'd certainly not actually risked anything so blatantly as to be in a position to be shot down -- but the content of that email led me to believe that, indeed, she was not mutually interested in me the way I was in her. (Again, this wasn't something explicitly stated. I was reading in between lines in between lines. Yes, yes, not healthy, not mature. No doubt.)
After a few hours of feeling extraordinarily down -- I'd really thought there might be a connection starting to form there, and the metaphorical rug just got yanked from under me -- I suddenly realized I was being an UTTER AND TOTAL MORON.
What the hell was I doing, mooning about a girl to whom I'd never said, "Hey, I'm interested in you, what do you think of me?", or even spent five minutes alone with? What was her opinion doing, having so much effect on my self-esteem?
I realized then and there -- or remembered, or something -- that my self-worth should *never*, *ever* have gotten to the point of being based on the opinion of a stranger... and indeed, should never really be based on anyone's opinion but my own. Yeah, I sound like I'm caught in some ABC Afterschool Special. But it's true. I'd been thinking of myself like I was a dish in a restaurant, trying to serve myself up to someone who might like me (what a bizarre metaphor... just came to me, I don't really know why I'm writing it down...) instead of deciding whether and how *I* liked me.
And just as suddenly, I realized that I hadn't thought about that in a long time.
What do I like about me? What makes *me* happy about *myself*? I've spent a goodly amount of time lately thinking about how making others happy makes me happy; how the behavior of others makes me happy; how I can encourage that behavior in others; how I should be behaving to *not* make myself *unhappy*; and how to get the people who make me happy (read: the women I'm attracted to) to spend more time around me, thereby making me (and hopefully them) happy... but I've spent virtually no time thinking about what *I* do that makes me happy.
Sounds selfish, I think. Or stupid. Or both. Or something. I certainly think I'm utterly butchering this re-telling of my thoughts. But anyway...
I realized that there were all these goals, ideals, etc that I dearly wanted in my life. A lot of little things, a couple big things, all part of my definition of myself, or at least of the definition I *wanted* to have of myself, and these things were all too often missing, incomplete, or forgotten.
Among the tops of these was my homepage, www.cyranojoe.com. To look at it now is to see the partial culmination of two or three years of wishes and dreams -- ever since I first started really doing stage combat, I've wanted to form Cyranojoe Productions, wanted to have a really *nice* webpage, wanted that silly logo even.
I first drew that sword at least two years ago, and it's been sitting in my bedroom in full view ever since. For some reason, I didn't believe in myself enough to try drawing it on a computer. No faith. No confidence. No pride.
Pride. A lot of this has to do with pride. That's the thing hovering around the background of every little action, every thought I describe here.
And when I was so bummed out by a single utterly ambiguous email, I realized that somewhere out there my confidence was running about, streaking mini-malls and defacing public property and certainly not sticking around me much.
What could I do, for me, to make me happy? Ignore people and what they want. Ignore what I want people to do for me. Ignore people -- frankly, I have an intense, intense streak of misanthropy, which nobody ever ever sees, in part because I shove it down so hard that it rarely impinges on my actual *behavior* -- and think about me, alone. It's a hard thing for me to do.
And maybe I'm overdramatizing the decision to finally get off my butt and draw up my webpage. But it's tough to overemphasize the effect that that and the "why am I letting these women I hardly know determine my self-esteem?" realization have had on me.
I breathe more freely. I don't beat on myself as much. I don't feel like my dreams are all slowly slipping out of my hands, out of all possible and impossible reach. Gods, if nothing else, I just load up and that page and I fucking SMILE. It's there. Me. My future. My dreams.
I think that's the point. And it's why I write. I need to point to something, point to it and say, "There. That's me. Understand me if you can. I have given you everything that matters, everything that makes me me, and if you don't get it, if it's nonsense to you... well, at least one person will enjoy the nonsense that is me -- me."
I load up cyranojoe.com and my brain turns on. Hope? Pride? God, I like those words. Especially pride.
Oh, nothing's perfect. I have a page-long list of fixes and adds for the site. I still mope around the house half the time. I'm still apathetic, still have trouble working as many hours as I need to, and don't respect myself for it. I haven't eaten well, haven't slept well, or simply *thought* well for a week or two. But I'm dealing.
Maybe it means I'm not depressed, and I was before. Whatever it is, I'm happier with myself. I've found I can still do things, still create, still make magic, make art. I am an artist. A writer. A thinker. A fight director. An actor. A singer, a musician, a dreamer and dancer on that eternal light fantastic, and a billion other things, all exceptional, all wonderful.
This leads into how I need to perceive myself as many-faceted, as broad-minded and generally competent... how I am incapable of being happy as a specialist in only one thing, how Cyrano's declaration, "I have decided -- I shall be the best in all things!" echoes like a thunderclap through my soul...
But I'm tired right now, and I think that entry (a more interesting one,
no doubt, than this) may have to wait. Perhaps I'll make it an addendum
to this, or perhaps I'll make a new one. Meh, who knows. It's all good.