Author: D'jaevle

I’ve been sleeping too much.

I wake up, and I want to stay in bed.

I get up, take a shower, and want to lay down on my large leather chair and close my eyes.

I get to work and I want to listen to classical music and forget where I am.

Too much sleep is a classic sign of depression. But I’m not depressed. I know this because I became intimately familar with depression in my adolesence. I never tested the bottom of that dark river – never felt true despair. In fact, there was a certain comfort in the melancholic embrace it had – it gave me permission to withdraw. But it was a temporary retreat, a false promise of solace that lead nowhere.

So why am I so…unmotiviated? I am still engaged in life – I do things. But I have no great challenge, no great reason.

Decent well-paying job? Check.
Nice, if small, house? Check.
Good friends? Check.

Maybe I just need a vacation.

Why do so many people, including me, find themselves putting up their personal thoughts, detailing life’s minutiae, expounding on the pros and cons of Kerry, euthanasia, and cunninglinus?

I can guess; some of it must derive from the human need to connect to others, to share. Some of it must be the writer in us finally being given space to exist. Some of it must be our desire to leave a written legacy, something that says we were here – we thought – we blogged. And some of it – perhaps a lot of it – is our attempt to get attention.

Me! Me! Over here! Helllo! Pay attention! Pay attentttttion!

Seriously, though – we all want to think we are unique, special – and we want recognition of this. And, well, yes – as individuals, we are quite different from each other. But being a human – one of billions, stretching back thousands of years – really, as a rule, we’re not likely to say something that hasn’t been said before.

So why do it?

There are quite a lot of people livejournalling, blogging, RnR Craiglist posting; but it’s not the number of people doing it that surprises me – it’s the fact that there are so many doing it well; that fact makes me pause. So many people who can write in such a fashion and about things that are so interesting that you want to read on. You want to unravel the serial adventures of their lives, you want to know what they think about tongue piercings, copyright law, and their mother’s broken car.

Therapy for the masses? Still debating this with myself. In the mean time though, I have to go read how that postal work’s affair with his mother-in-law is working out…

Ever stop to smell the roses?

This phrase, unfortunately, has lost a lot of the magic it once had; it has become a Hallmark card, the lesson learned by a forty-something construction worker after a 90 minute after-school special. This doesn’t make it any less true or important – but it has certainly lost some of its punch.

So I have a new idea.

If we liken roses to those things in life that we enjoy, those things which are good, then the concept embodied by it only takes the idea part of the way. What about the time spent away from the roses? The hard, sad, and indifferent times? Few of us have the luxury of cultivating rose gardens. Should we pull back from life when it becomes hard?

I was discussing this with my brother the other day- he’s going to be making some difficult choices in the near future. It is easy to avoid making choices; you can let life make them for you. But in allowing things to happen – you are no longer driving – you are a passenger. For me, it is important that I be an active participant in my life – all of it. It’s not just the roses that are precious, but the thorns that draw blood and remind of how fragile life is. It is the soil we tend and the act of nurturing it so that good things come.

It is about being in front when we do things. There is a distinction between doing things and experiencing them. An obvious example is the way we tune out when driving to and from work; it is automatic, a motion we are going through. Now imagine this state pervading your whole life, without you realizing it. This is the state most of us are in, until something, amazing wonderful or devastatingly bad, wakes us up.

I want to experience life, not just pass through it. I want to be an active participant in my life.

Neither Wikpedia, nor Webster.com, were very helpful in defining ‘introduction’.

I am neither a musical passage, nor, despite my meandering words, a novel. I am simply human and all the good, evil, and otherwise that comes with it. So this introduction will be done without guidance. I’m just going to free-style it.

Hello, nice to meet you.

Half the fun of a blog is seeing details emerge. The shape of a person. The way they craft their words, the glimpses into their life. I would not want to rob you of this by giving away too much at the beginning. Some of you already know way too much about me. But a few guideposts would be appropriate.

I’m part of the male half of the species. I live on the east coast. I read (a lot).

I am a sinner. I like being a sinner. At one point I thought I might want to be a priest; someday perhaps. I’m not quite done with the sinning.

I’ll leave a taste of my sinning in the next couple of posts. Just a feel of them.