Keeping the Faith

My journal has changed, like my writing has, over the years I've kept it. I'm almost lacking the ability to be concise, enjoying the freedom to ramble at length all over it to the point that my literary discipline has ebbed almost to a breaking point. I like the long winded passages, a looping route from A to B that is patient and (hopefully sometimes) observant. But instead this approach typically just registers under 'exhaustive.' It's generally not an asset for a writer to illicit a strong urge to take a nap in his reader. Maybe I can write books to cure insomnia, there may be some mad bank in that. Is it time to digress?

The journal really has become an exercise of ad nauseum. I still enjoy keeping it, but I also feel something of a duty to keep it, as it has devolved into a daily ledger, keeping toll of my routines and habits, but generally devoid of the energy and happiness that each day brings- the characters are not fleshed out for a reader, just for me, just in my head. Maybe it's always been like that, I've just been blind to an outsider's perspective. I could spend hours going over it and reflecting, on the good times and the (scant few) bad times, and smiling over all of the otherwise mediocre times. It is my own little secret garden, and I enjoy it. My garden is filled with things like dumpster diving, scotch whiskey, trust falls, parking lots, packing twenty people into a diner, rocking out, cuddling... and mostly just some really fantastic people.

I guess I want to write a novel, to really capture the story as it plays, not just doting on some overarching timeline. Maybe what I have is an incredible resource of notes for myself, sparking memories from all of the most recent chapters of my life: Varsity Football, Senior Year of High School, the Summer of 2005, Going to College... and right up to the most recent, Falling in Love.
It has chronicled all of that for me, and I have constructed a vastly complex skeleton. Now I want to breathe life into it.

Yes, I can fill out a little mood icon, but when nine out of ten posts are labelled 'cheerful' or 'chipper' does that point seem moot? I'm a happy dude, I feel blessed with my lot, and when sadness or anger or any other emotion comes over me, I usually get over it within a few hours. My posts are rarely particularly intense in their connotation, instead denoting a bird's eye view of the scene unfolding. How fun is that to watch? I'm there, I know the feelings on the field that day, but I have not figured out how to transform that medium into something presentable. And maybe that's okay, maybe the target audience is an audience of one, me. Maybe for my closest friends, the ones who have access to all of the four hundred and eight articles posted there, there is some value in my monotony of words. Who knows? I started this project for myself, and that is how I continue it, and if it can offer insight to anyone else, good on it, but that was never my intent. Through this raw analysis, I have decided I am content with my journal as it is, as it has been, and however it ends up being.

But now I want to parlay these experiences into something of worth to a general audience, give the people and things in my life the credit that is due. I'm a writer, I write, but I don't want to just write for myself forever. I want to use this gift, whatever it is, some meager feat of language that at the very least allows me to fill page after page with some sort of drivel, to accomplish something more. More than just writing sports for a newspaper, more than just news reports or a column. I want to write for people, I want to write with a grander purpose in mind. I'd like to learn how to really channel words into something constructive. Can something so flimsy as a font upon a paper ever be more than symantics and posturing? I want to believe it can be. I want to defy the notion that 'we speak the way we breathe' because it's what I do best, and I want it to be something of substance, something palpable, something to put weight behind.

I've already found meaning in life, a sense of worth, and I don't have to look to accomplishing something great in the eyes of the 'world' to appreciate where I belong. The ones that matter to me are right in front of me, and understanding that has allowed me to remain cheerful and chipper, and most of all, happy. I don't need anything more than the people in my life, and the will to do the best I can in every aspect, to love life, to love living. And that I have faith that there is more than just pain and suffering, more than even laughing and loving, more than just life on earth, that helps me keep my chin up too. I don't feel the need to impress the universe, or do anything great for the world as a whole, but I'll try my best to anyway. And if I can't, if my life ends up just being a cavalcade of happiness and sadness on a small stage, having shared that with people I love will ensure me that everything, everything is worth it.

So, yeah, about being concise... not so much. A clue may have been the meandering duality of this entry, with rampant juxtapositioning crafting a landscape that doesn't fit together quite right. I'll try to wrap it up now: I am supremely happy with what I have, and will do my best to excel further, but even if I fail in that, my foundations, the friends and family that support me, are enough to make my internal prosperty endure. That kind of happiness, it makes any struggle and toil completely worth it. The world as a whole is incomprehensible, but it is enough to just try to understand and care for the few others that you share your life with. It is perhaps the most noble pursuit an individual can pursue.

To cynics, you have my pity. Being critical has it's merit, but never mitigate your happiness, or you're missing the best things life has to offer.

Cheers!