These things have always been the same.

I went back and read through the second half of last year in my daily journal last week and what stood out above all else was not that I was depressed (which is the way I remember 2013), but rather that I was almost psychotically optimistic.  Yes, there were stretches, sometimes for days at a time, in which every line was drenched in a lonely hopelessness that I would never rid myself of the people/habits/life choices that were dragging me down.  But every fucking time, those stretches were followed by days of pep talks and lists of things accomplished (Jesus, the number of jobs I applied for) and of self-assurances that it was going to “be okay.”

I wrote that it would be okay until somehow it actually was.

Earlier this year, I made a conscious decision to reduce what I was putting to paper because I feared I might be missing out on my life while in the process of turning it into a story.  Now I think I may have taken that too far; my one blog entry here from last month actually makes my public word tally for that time period a hell of lot better than my private one.

Which brings me to my point:  If you’re really lucky in life, you’ll run across a handful of people who care about who you are and what happens to you, but the overwhelming majority are so busy being concerned with what’s going on in their own heads that they have neither the time nor the inclination to care one way or another about what’s going on in yours.  That’s either the ultimate in liberation or absolutely terrifying, depending on how you look at it...but you know what’s even worse?  Understanding how many people out there don’t even care about themselves.

I think that part of how I take care of myself is writing through things – good and bad.  I don’t need a pep talk right now, nor do I need the reassurance that it’ll all be okay.  But it would be nice to be able to look back on this year with the same sense of surprise that I felt when reading about last year.  In that sense, I wonder if I didn’t have it somewhat backwards:  that in writing it down I begin to grasp how much living I do.

What I do know is that I seem to know what I need more than I consciously think I do.  Have I written this before?  Seems like maybe yes...apparently writing this same blog entry over and over is something that I need...  (So, you know, heads up that this probably won't be the last time...)