I, Bruce, do hereby declare my appointed position as liaison, chief of staff, and director of communications for Mr. Bell “the Bellman” Belltron. This arrangement is effective immediately and will expire at 5:00PM Friday the 9th.
This appointment is created in accord with Belltron for the expressed purpose of increasing efficiency and the liberation of time. Implementation of this policy includes, but is not limited to, the regulation of communications (electronic or otherwise) and a serious kibosh on the cell phone.
Belltron shall be released to the public at the stated time and date.
Thanks,
Bruce
How Much Is My Blog Worth? is a website that computes the total value of your blog. Kind of a cool idea, for sure, but it’s like, what is value anyway? That being said, my blog is apparently worth:
$1,693.62
Not too shabby for an unorganized glob of swirling semantics. I’m tempted to sell. The value is clearly on its way down…
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I relish in the suspense of my own productivity. Secretly, I love to push the limits. Maybe it’s not too secret afterall. I dare the whole world to doubt, to place it’s bet against, and I enjoy the bleek odds that I create for myself. It’s an addiction. And this is just the motivation that tickles me inside. Admittedly, it’s almost sinister.
So what if the world stops paying attention? Good question. But not possible. These days, I feel too dialed in. The world will outright turn against me before it stops paying attention. Plus, there’s always the loving few who can’t help but care; they’re predisposed to care… and as much as it is unsettling to hear, love does exist in this way. Love, as such a burden, is a conversation for another time.
I’m advocating a type of living that disregards the ‘safe’ decision, and transcends the idea of a ‘comfort zone.’ The whole world is one’s playground, and fear of failure is blindly overshadowed by the drive to defy the doubt, to overcome the odds. This style of living might receive praise, and turn heads, but if anything, it quickly discourages sympathy. For who really has time to give sympathy to someone who has ‘put himself in this position’? I also suspect that it fails to invite true allegiance. If the situation looks like something more egocentric than perseverant, on what basis could a comradery really be sustained, especially upon a failure or shortcoming? — you know the saying, “When the team is playing well, everybody is a fan.” I sense that if things go wrong with me, people will be disappointed… but sympathetic? Doubtful. Keep their allegiance? Doubtful. However, I’m prepared to switch it all up if that’s what needs to happen, to kick this social world and start anew. If it all hits the fan, and I find myself alone in my dejection, I’ll still have my sense of self, and I’m cool with starting all over. What’s life to be otherwise?
My life will not be predictable, nor scripted. I won’t allow it.
The trouble is, in regards to my big picture view, it’s never gone wrong. I’ve always taken on many projects, and the boundaries have had to give, and exceptions have had to been made, but I’ve come out on top (or what feels like ‘on top’… maybe this is a key distinction; one which might save me an ounce of what already sounds like arrogance). My fear now is that I’ve begun to take the cosmos all for granted. I lost my wallet on Friday night, after a drunken rage in Santa Cruz, and some homeless men helped me find it on the public beach, Sunday afternoon. You tell me how I’m supposed to think that things aren’t supposed to work out. The other day, I was called an “egotistical optimist,” and I’ve rescinded my initial retort, and reluctantly am in full agreement. I’m probably the definition of an egotistical optimist, but one who has been traditionally comforting and dependable to others. I don’t understand the balance either.
It’s gotten to the point where I know no other way of doing things though. I feel reluctant to change my approach (under the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra), but I admit that, these days, I’m asking myself if I really think my habits will work this time around. But honestly, I don’t feel like I know how to make decisions under the guise of a fundamentally different way of living.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten was from Matt Armstrong a long time ago. In a very personal letter, which I’ve sinced misplaced but haven’t lost, he complimented my counseloring abilities, comparing me to a camp legend who I’ve always respected. Armstrong kept his letter short and sweet, and in a single sentence he gave me three quick bits of advice. The second bit seemed embedded in the middle for a reason, so as to sound slight and to risk being overlooked, but I believe it to be the most important part of his message, said in a way where it wouldn’t outright offend or discourage: “Keep your ego in check,” he said, and glory will follow. It was an impressionable age, and I’ve never forgotten his words. But I’m afraid my good fortune and achievements since have let my ego out of the bag. I walk with a confidence that is too transparent for my tastes. I offend myself at times. Maybe I listen to too much Fifty Cent for my own good… (but how can I stop?!)
This level of awareness is essential. My sense of self-projection plays a role in my temptation to defy and to procrastinate. But my wits still have the last say. I recognize my ego needs to be challenged by itself, restrained even. It’s been running around, doing what it wills, meddling with my sense of what should be important to me, and I feel as if I’ve finally captured it in my cupped hands. But if I open up my hands, then what?
I won’t distinguish or absolve the ego. I’m in no mood for the apathy that ensues, and I think it’s essential to having and pursuing interests. My ego has been my edge, my fuel, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise, but it simply can’t be center stage. (I got goals, man). I need to put it to work. The problem is that the ego has no foresight, and can’t recognize the relationship between it’s short term goals and it’s long term ones. It needs to take ownership in maintaining the equilibrium it so craves, or else it will fall short — like it is designed to do if given full control. I need to put my ego to the test of discipline and honest effort, or I will lose my chance to be a part of an even bigger EGO. Period.
The first step to change is admittance. The second is to devise a plan that will work. The third? Application.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a very strange feeling inside. It’s a mental state of conscious suppression, and like ice cold milk trickling down my throat on warm day, I can feel the movement of thought within me. There’s a suspense to it all. I know, it sounds strange, but this entry is my first attempt to begin to wrestle with it, so I must beg your patience as I do my own.
For some time now, I’ll feel the inertia of my being swell up with a type of urgency. And what’s more, these inklings tend to accumulate while I’m already fully engaged in a particular thought, or conversation, or activity at hand. It’s as if my intuition is driving me to further contribute to the situation around me, like an internal call prompting me to make a statement, or perform some action. It begins with a very tangible feeling of lack, a sort of desire or appetite to do more for the moment, but it’s not specific. It’s just the initial instinct alone –- without direction, and without definition. In that same moment, I can feel an additional emotion, a counter emotion that begins to swell within me. It’s almost like a slight frustration with the first. It’s as if these mental forces within me are wrestling blindly, where half of my energy demands my focus and calls me to action, and a second energy is immediately disgusted with the half-hearted orientation of the primal urge itself. I say ‘half-hearted’ here to strongly undercut its lack of focused intent.
On the one hand, there is this undeniable desire for action, for response, for contribution to the moment, and on the other hand, there is a dissatisfaction with the fact that the need itself is overwhelmingly empty, and unspecific. The articulation of the action, the means to satisfying the urge, the how to, simply doesn’t come quick enough. “What do I want me to do!?” And before I even begin to inquire about what the urge is, I suppress it. I let the entire emotion pass. I make an active, conscious decision to move on, and I give my anxiousness no attention. It’s as if I punish the urge for lacking certainty. I force the entire moment to settle. And to make the moment more permanent, to prevent myself from second guessing, I never return to [evaluate] that decision. That is, in later moments of thought and reflection, I never return to question that previous instant, I never attempt to interrogate my act of suppression (of me).
Perhaps it’s as if, in that moment, I was too much for me. I had more energy than resources. Energy that hoped to be explored, but which sadly was unaccompanied with any specific purpose or failed to articulate its relevance, and thus was abandoned. And justly enough, in the moment of suppression, in that moment where I turn my back on the sudden propensity for action, I feel an overwhelming sense of ease, of resolution. There’s a regainment of control. “Hey, it’s gone, now. That unspecific desire has come to pass. No need to worry. Let us return to putting our focus externally, and prepare to engage the situation at hand. ‘I’m sorry, John, now what were you saying’…”
The only reason I bring this up is because it’s been happening and happening with more and more frequency. I’ll feel the urge to say something, or I’ll feel as if there is something I haven’t done or should’ve already done, or worse, that there is something I should be doing in this exact instant! –- but these brief moments of intuitive unrest, if you will, they lack a definitiveness, and in that moment of ambiguity, I simply ignore, forget and proceed without regret.
In taking this time to verbally hash out my experience and to consciously wrestle with this phenomenon, I can’t help but wonder what these inclinations are, what they serve, and if something is being lost in my denial of them. I mean, in a way, this is rather creepy. I can’t remember this ever happening to me before, and I wonder where this suppression instinct in me has come from. And further, if I understand myself to be a single “I”, how can one identity sustain such opposing dialogue? For surely, the tension if left unresolved will tear the Self apart…
…I can only imagine.
“He’d be rolling in his grave right now.
If only he could see this,
this contemptible state you’ve created to date.”
My body lets out an exhale of gi-normous proportion.
I whisper to myself, under my breath,
like a small child before candlelight.
“You stupid, stubborn, selfish little boy.
How quickly you’ve come to waste!
You’ve layed down your sword, and your guard,
and this tasteless torpor has seized our face.
At any rate, what will come of you?”
I am in hell. Make no mistake.
My privatized freedom is now for the public sake.
What should be my burden to bear,
is now a heavy concern for others who care.
I could hack off my roots, and prove I can float on my own,
Turn ‘round my back, and teach a rude lesson to know.
I could pull the whole plug on this Aaron Bell show.
But there’s just no love in that. Too drastic.
There’s no where to turn. I’m on center stage.
I have no place to hide. No way to be unpredictable.
I’m just a show to them. A true cliffhanger.
But, old friend, my grip is slipping.
And with that, I’m back in Eugene. In my absence, the leaves have already changed their colors and fallen from their branches. The sun has left our region, and the painful tears of winter have rushed in under a gray blanketed sky. It’s dismal at best. Everything in Eugene is unfinished business, but it feels homey nonetheless. And in an all too strange way, it’s good to be home. I’ve fallen pretty hard in Eugene, and I realize that I have much to prove… to myself. The mild patience of a northwest winter is all that I could ask for.
I’m happy to have caught the “Batman Begins” movie on my flight home from Tampa Bay last night. Don’t you remember why we fall in the first place? …The good Mr. Wayne would insist, “so we can learn how to get back up.” This will be my lesson for the next 6 weeks. I have much climbing to do. The term is half way over, and I must evolve into a writing machine. Hopefully, I can use my blog as a place to keep me mentally accountable. A place to digest and re-hash some of my school work. A place to keep my academic appetite fresh and fluid. I’m very nervous, but I need this moment of admittance to propel me.
Everything is on the line, Bell. Are you a competitor or what!
I need a job. I need to keep working out. To keep throwing hard. To keep writing daily. To keep making time for me. I just need to keep on keepin’ on… with diligence. That’s the key. I will be my own strength or my own weakness throughout the coming weeks. And in the end, my life’s reality will fall on my own two shoulders.
Already, before I begin, I feel the fatigue of Sisyphus without having carried his burden. It’s as if I know that I have this boulder to roll uphill, but I find myself refusing to begin. I don’t know how to explain it. That attitude must leave. I must plunge forth. I must leap, and hold myself accountable from this moment forward. I wonder why this is so hard for me, why it is so hard to just sit, and read and write, and get it done. I must have the skills, right? I must be smart enough. I must have the ability. Do I lack the patience? Do I lack the focus? Do I depend on pressure? How could I know, especially if I never let myself operate without? I am twenty-four years old. I have lived a long time, and done a lot of things, but I must take ownership of my future. If I don’t insist on keeping my grip, the world will let me slip. And once more, I must revisit Miss Nature’s most honest motif: the world is a striving, and who am I to defy such an order?
It’s always a ‘beginning’ with me… and I realize that I lose my continuity. This is not a new beginning for me. I left these responsibilities on the table, and now I return. This is not a fresh start. This is a second half comeback. This is resilience, not a beginning. On second thought— “I must continue…”