A Close Up Look at Crazy - 7/25/14

my internal struggle

I have less than 30 days to go until I embark on my new life. I have so many things to do to prepare. Today I am checking some writing off the list--I've been writing all morning and the directions I'm going are multi-faceted. Before I get too confused, I need to get organized.

What follows is something I wrote on the 22nd of July and subsequently decided against using for anything. But...I can't stop thinking about it.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

I've never had a lot of money. In fact, I've existed below the poverty level nearly my entire life. But for me, that was not a problem. Most of the time, I was happy. All I ever wanted was to be able to be independent and have a quiet place of my own. I've never been high maintenance, even when I was a child.

Of course there were the dreams--dreams of being rich and not having to worry about my living situation--dreams of being rich and being able to go where I wanted and help my family and make a contribution to society. I always wanted to do some sort of good for animals and people who needed a hand up.

I especially envisioned helping the homeless. I believe the earth is ours to share with one another and no person should feel they have nowhere to go and no one that cares. A human being sleeping on a public sidewalk, with people casually walking by as if there's nothing there, is a travesty. It speaks volumes to who we are as a race.

It doesn't matter to me why they are there--only that they are. It's always been so simply solved in my mind. We open restaurants for the homeless to come in and eat and be treated like the people they are and we open centers for them to spend their days, if they like, and shelters for them to sleep at night. Rules? Sure. Show respect for others and don't hurt anybody. We have enough food on this planet to feed our hungry and enough space to house our tired. And there is certainly enough money out there to make this happen.

Everyone has their issues--I undeniably have mine. How we can look at someone and judge them through our own distorted views, and then turn a blind eye to them because of it, is beyond me. It is unspeakable that we do this. Unspeakable.

Every experience we have in life contributes to who we are and no one can truly know what has brought another to their current state. We can not possibly walk in their shoes. But we can offer of ourselves that most basic of positive human qualities--compassion. The more of this we offer, the better we feel as humans. Compassion seems so often to have been replaced with indifference, anger, and even hatred. This will destroy us, if left unchecked.

Well, today's entry was not really supposed to go in this direction, but apparently I do have a passion. I meant to write about my lack of ambition and my willingness to settle with next to nothing.

I intended to try to set a goal or two for the new life I'm about to begin. Now I can't remember the ideas I started with, but I have most definitely been inspired anew.

When I was a waitress in the French Quarter in New Orleans, I often rode the St. Charles Ave streetcar to work. I would take in the beauty of the historic mansions along the route, and quietly wish my mom were there to see it. I don't know why, but the journey through that area always made me happy for the tranquility and the majesticness of it and sad for the loss of my mom.

Once in the city, there was a particular vacant building--I believe on a corner--that would always get me fantasizing about a restaurant for the homeless. It would be a place where they could order off the menu and be waited on by a waitress and fill their stomachs and their souls with nourishment. This image in my head would always make me smile, but I never failed to couple it with reality--I knew it would never be. It was just a dream.

Writing about the homeless is of course the reason I've been taken back to my streetcar days and those memories. But there's something different when I'm picturing that restaurant this time. Today I am the waitress. I picture myself happily making the rounds of tables, taking orders, smiling, talking, sharing stories--helping people to have a good day.

The more I think about it, the more I feel the happiness grow inside me. I haven't felt this excited about something in a very long time. Why do I think this is not possible? This is absolutely possible!

This is such a good thing! I started the day struggling to find a goal and now I have the clearest picture in my head about the direction I want my life to take. A mission is born! I have so many ideas right now. I'm off to write them down.

At this point, I opened a new text document and wrote:

And then I decided to make it a webpage for Sharing What's Good and I wrote this intro for it:

A Mission Is Born

I write a lot, for many different reasons. I write to remember events. I write so that people will understand me better when I'm gone. I write to record my many fleeting ideas. I write for myself, for my family, for my websites.

This morning when I started writing, I had a purpose for it--an intention--that I don't remember. I got a little distracted and completely forgot why I was writing to begin with. I have an idea of what I was going to write about, but not for whom I was writing it.

Now none of this means anything. It's just that I feel a little strange about publishing it, because I don't believe I originally meant to show it here.

And then, in a flash, everything changed! I journaled this:

Okay, I wrote down some ideas and spent a little time being extremely motivated and now comes the part where I feel like I must've been drunk or on drugs. I feel stupid. What was I thinking? Again! I sound ignorant. I need to stop this. I need to stop writing. I need to start being normal. I need to plan for the lousy little life I am going to have without adding to my troubles by being a nutcase. I want to be normal--to feel normal. This sucks! How do I stop doing this? The ideas feel so real when they come. They feel like they are part of a normal thinking session. How do they get so crazy and out of hand? Why do they take over like too much alcohol? Why can't I see it when it's happening?

I need to plan and set my goals--decide on where I'm going and how I will support myself. That's real.

The next few days

I tried to stop thinking about my restaurant, but I couldn't. I understood it was just a dream, and didn't get crazy about the idea again, but I couldn't let it go, either. I did eventually look up Jon Bon Jovi's Soul Kitchen to see what his was like. Except for being a community restaurant, his is not much like the one I have pictured. He's doing some awesome work for people in so many areas. How I wish I could.

Today

Trying to work on preparing for my new journey. I thought there is no reason I need to forget about this dream or any of the others (which are many) that I have.

The coming year will be a year of change. I will work toward my short term goals, which include writing at least two books (never mind that I am not polished in that art), increasing my income to at least 36,000 per year (from a much too embarrassing low to divulge), and understanding, possibly altering, but most likely accepting, the person I am.

I will do most of this privately, but will journal it all, and at the end of the year I will decide what's next.

There has to be an in between in my mind. If I can't find that place, well I think I will need to figure out ways to work around the highs and lows and try to accomplish at least some of what I would like to do.