July 6, 2015
The other day I was talking to someone about having a day job and I very specifically remember a question he threw at me that stumped me. Here's how it went:
Me: "I just feel like I'm wasting my time sometimes."
Him: "I understand but go more into detail."
Me: "When I'm at home, I have all these projects I want to do but I can't focus on them because I have to come here and turn my brain off to serve customers. It's a different way of thinking that stunts my creativity sometimes."
Him: "Okay. Well said."
Me: "Ah! It just makes me so angry!"
Him: "Well, what exactly makes you angry? Like, what are you specifically angry at?"
I opened my mouth at this question with full intention of answering but nothing came out. I did one of those things where you lean forward to slam some sweet pile of truth on someone until you realize you don't have any, so you slowly lean back in your seat staring at the ground like someone just shattered your world. I didn't have a good answer! I DIDN'T HAVE AN ANSWER AT ALL! Hell, I was angry and I didn't even know what for!
There were these series of events that led to this emotion yet I hadn't dived into them to figure out why I was angry as an outcome. I just took the emotion for what it was and rolled with it. (I advise to always ask yourself why you feel a certain way about something. It'll lead to wonderful self growth but that'll have to be a separate blog on another day). To be honest, I didn't figure it out for several weeks. It was this constant nagging in my ear that would pop up in times of silence. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me about the whole thing because of several reasons:
- I actually enjoy my job most of the time
- I owe an immeasurable amount to this family because they took me in and gave me a new life and it is one that I never felt like I deserved
- This job is paying my bills and allowing me to literally create, so why would it bother me so much
- I can just be dimwitted sometimes
So today I sit down at my computer and I watch this video by Jacksgap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAuoyZIdHGs , and I was just drenched with inspiration. It flowed through me like a waterfall and I got beat around with energy and life and that's exactly the way you should feel when watching these videos. BUT I also got angry again. So naturally, this question came back into my head, "What are you specifically angry at?"
As I watched the rest of the video and the other video that accompanies it, I sought an answer.
What I came up with is that I'm angry at myself. Angry about all the time I waste and have wasted not creating, not doing, not sprinting, not bleeding everything into what I want to do as a life. I'm sitting here watching these two guys, younger than I am, that are traveling the world, experiencing everything, spreading culture, and doing it as a career. While I'm sitting at home behind my computer, working around a day job, and the last place I traveled in months is to the Target ten minutes away. I'm angry at myself for not making my future what I want it to be. I'm letting other factors control my future. At that point is it even yours?
We're young. We have talent. We have the ridiculous mindset for this. If you're angry too, grab that anger, push it straight into your chest, use that anger and fucking change your future. We can sleep when we're dead right?