1. 'i would go out a lot when I was young. I think most people do. It's the time of your life where you feel like you need to test your legs, see what fitsm how else do you come to understand who you are, right? 

 

I was just trying to have fun. I was out to have a good time. I was out to have a good time, until I wasn't. 

 

Sometimes, you climb real high, as high as you can go. Just to see if you get the impulse to jump. 

 

And a couple of times, I did. And you brace for the ground, then your adrenaline drops when you find that you don't hit it. You pass through itm you don't even slow down. It just keeps going. 

 

You can't even really be mad though

 

 because you jumped, didn't you? 

 

This is what you wanted, wasn't it?

 

To fall

 

but not forever. 

 

sometimes we want a taste of the fall knowing where it'll stop, but that's the nature of falling, here, in the ether. By the twisted rules of invisible floors and glass ceilings. 

 

I feel like that's what a lot of my twenties were about. Toe-ing for both and finding neither. But mostly it was about exploring the falls. 

 

Mostly it was about the imprecise science of trying to 

 

lose control. 

 

And I wonder if I've been able to let go of that. There's this weird cliche of philosophical sense -- I don't know if you can call it 'new age' or whatever, it's a very old concept. "Let go." 

And maybe that was my clumsy, lazy way of interpreting that. Maybe it was me thinking "oh, I'm so clever. I get this thing beat," donning those waxen wings with a smug hopefulness 

 

let me tell you, I've cried enough in my life to know that, by the weight of my heart, I really hope that was beaten out of me. 

 

I really hope I've decided I've had enough of that. "

 

3. 'recently I've been rethinking a lot of things that have happened to me. At the time I didn't think much of them because either I decided I didn't have time or I decided they didn't effect me or whatever. But when I think of them now I can almost feel my own thoughts trying to lead me away from them. My own body rejecting them. But like gravity, they're things that I'm holding onto that still affect me, and that .... Repression(?) It comes out in unpredictable ways. It effects my relationships I think. 

 

I'm not sure if I'm ready to share those things. Maybe one of them. I'm not sure if I'm ready to hear myself say the words because , maybe 

 

that's what makes it so much more real. That's the step out of this -- this closet metaphor. Into my real life. 

 

These things happened and they cut right through me with a trauma that just shut me down. 

 

Alien pains, you could call it. You could but someone might make fun of you. 

 

I have had a really hard time of this. I have a really tenuous relationship with timelines and reality and details. I don't feel like I can trust my own memory fairly often. A lot of things just don't register for me. A lot of emotions that should be there just don't bother showing up for work anymore. it's really useful in a crisis, but it's really 

 

not useful

 

in every day life. 

 

It kind of bothers me that I define the value of my own feelings and experience as 'useful' sometimes. Not sometimes. All the time. It bothers me that I'm wired up like that and its taking a lot of effort to not be that way. 

 

It's exhausting "

 

5. "even now like, during this interview I'm tearing up. Like, it's automatic. Tears are just happening. Sometimes it comes with the feelings, sometimes the feelings are disproportionate. Sometimes it feels like it all comes from nowhere, or the tears will come and the feelings meant to come with them show up in the mail later. When I'm in traffic or when I'm just sitting, looking out the window. Or in the middle of a conversation. Then I look like a weirdo. Just start getting emotional about , about whatever we re talking about. 

 

it's 

 

I don't know what it is. I don't really know. But I've been making guesses."

 

7. 'god, 

going through these books I feel so 

 

I feel like such an outsider. I feel like a failure. I feel so 

 

misunderstood. 

 

I feel like my visions-- my ideas -- I just blot them down so frantically before they evaporate and people really struggle to feel what I'm feeling when I make them. 

 

maybe my talents are just not there.

 

I'm 30 now 

so maybe they'll never be there ."

 

9. "I have a yearning to be recognized and validated by people better than me. I think everyone does. But where does it stop? When will I find peace in form and function instead of just in the ritualistic convincing of myself that of it's not ok, that it's going to be ok.

 

when will I stop ignoring the people that already love me in the pursuit of the love that's 

 

O V E R 

T H E R E 

"

 

11. "I've been having a hard time with empathy re: people telling me how dissatisfied they are with their career right now. Now with all this covid distancing stuff in, I mean. They're not satisfied with it anymore. They miss the interaction. They don't find the work meaningful or gratifying or valuable. And like 

 

Ive been feeling that for YEARS. I fucking HATE the toil and tedium and arbitration of the kind of work I do. And now it's starting to effect me, physically. I'm getting too old for it. But it's all I'm good enough at to get paid for. 

 

That's how I feel anyway. But I know better. 

 

I know I'm really mad just at myself for being ok with it 

 

all this time being okay with it. Then I hear someone else not being ok with their stuff and I just 

 

get 

fucking

jealous. And petty. And the empathy turns off because to have it on means I admit it 

 

I admit that I have to be better than this

and I admit that Im more than this. 

 

Im fucking wasting my life.

 

for some reason, that's a hard truth to swallow" 

 

13. "it used to be fine. I could enjoy my life in the off hours. I can be fulfilled in my free time. I can feel fulfilled in the little spaces or through the little things while working 

 

.but can you fucking imagine how improved my life would be if my work was actually, genuinely, enjoyable, challenging, or fulfilling? Or, god, all three?

 

Imagine. 

 

Imagine the smoke it would make to be at the burning wheel

the fucking 

helm of THAT world. To be THAT me. 

 

How do I get there and why do I want to be there so badly, now, all of a sudden? 

 

That's what I'm navigating in my life right now, I think. "