Month: March 2011

Counting Down

Never in my life have I been so challenged as these past couple months. There are countless reasons, true, but my very thesis should have made everything fun. Instead, it is (was..please God let me get to was) probably the most mind-cracking, wtf am I doing with my life, I’m going to explode right now experience. To analyze all these wonderful feelings I looked back to some of the books I had read about play, and play theory. I still..to this day go back to the one quote that stuck out at me even before I opened a page of any of that pulp. “The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.” Ever curious I wonder if my, totally magnificent brain decided to prove this on a subconscious level. If it did I swear to everything holy that I’m going to rip it out through my ear canals and pound the living grey matter out of it. Studying the serious state of play, should be work, yes, and it is. The deeper you seem to go, however, and the more you seem to push yourself, the darker the path. The treatment by those around, particularly “partners” makes you hyper-sensitive. I’ve never, wait, not true, once before, I have wanted to be so far away from a person that you are pretty sure they moved to another planet completely. That every essence of their being has left this plane never to effect you again. Then, 4 or 5 years form now you can stumble onto their Facebook page wherein you feel a sharp pain in your lower spine. The feeling passes and you click forward to the next profile. I want to be there right now. I want to be, 4 years away. A. To see if all of this, wonderfulness of educational spirit pays off. B. To heal. C. To forget. D. To breathe again, normally, and with predetermined sleeping patterns. E. To smile. F. To live. G. To love. H. Peace. So when someone asks me, at the next interview, “So, what’d you learn?” I am going to lean in, real close like, and say, “Mister, I learned that people just want to live their lives. Some don’t play well with others, and really I don’t want to know those people.”

Just get another one.

It seems certain themes keep recurring. I am curious if it has to do with the whole “once you see something once you are wary of it everywhere” syndrome. The theme for me this week, that my mind is coming to terms with is the idea of being replaceable. It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, and I wouldn’t recommend many dwell on it. But it seems like a lot of hostility and frustration comes from this concept. Quite frankly, we are all replaceable. In a world where we are (or at least should be) shooting for sustainability, one would think that it would trickle down to the human. I struggle with this concept now. I am replaceable. It feels better to say it, but in every aspect of your life, you are replaceable. Everyone falls victim to this at some point. Actors, surgeons, lawyers, future NFL players. Maybe the person that steps in isn’t this or that, surely they are not your clone, but they can learn or already do something better than you ever thought you could. You just got replaced bitch. Work. REPLACED! Love. Pitched..then REPLACED (hopefully in that order)!! Bowling teams…all of the sudden you find yourself on the alternate roster. and REPLACED. It is always personal? No, but we almost always take it personally. There’s a little tinge. It’s in the back of your brain no matter how focused you think you are. You might even twitch your left eye when you hear, that you’ve been swapped.

So now the real question, how do we deal with this? I say it aloud, think about the reasons behind it, and try to dissect those. It’s painful. It’s remorseful. It’s humbling. It might not even get you anywhere, and I highly recommend an alcoholic beverage nearby. But you say it aloud. You acknowledge it. Hell, write it down so you know you’ve done it. Then take a step forward. Maybe even go out the door.