In a post last month, I mentioned that happiness is the journey, not the destination. I wasn't born with that knowledge, nor was it a sudden epiphany; it came over many years of both personal experience and hearing it externally. Hearing it or thinking about it is one thing, but truly believing it and hammering it into your stream of consciousness is another. Along this quest, there's a band that I have listened to quite bit, though not much in the past couple of years. That band is Blue October. Blue October isn't so much a band as it is a journal set to music and a haven for so many people who have, know someone, or can relate to mental illness. The lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, is bipolar, and his songs deal with topics related to both his own struggles with and the general subject matters of mental illness, addiction, self-destructive behaviors, loneliness, and heartbreak. It doesn't stop there, though, as the flip side to it is song about recovery, goals, and moving on with life. About four years ago I reminded myself daily of my goal which came from a song of theirs off of the Consent to Treatment album, and that song was Independently Happy. For a while I had been either independent or happy, but not both at the same time. There was a lot of self-evaluation I needed to do, time that I needed to be even more introspective than normal. I forced myself to try and put priority on the right things, to find balance in my life.
For a while, it mostly worked. I never quite had a feeling of inner peace, but I was staying active, working on bettering myself, and forcing myself to focus on activities and events, not whom I could do them with. I opened up myself to a whole plethora of new experiences. At the time I still had my lows - I'd refer to my life at times as a gilded existence, as on the surface everything looked wonderful, but it was only a facade for the emptiness beneath the surface. There was still something I hadn't come to terms with yet, and it's ultimately what both kept me going full speed, which made life worthwhile, as well as made me crash, from which I am still sort of recovering from. That something was my profession. After high school, I took one year to get my AA, then I transferred schools with a declared math major. After one semester, I switched to economics, as I wanted something that was more application and less pure theory. It wasn't until my final semester that I had my Healthcare Economics class, at which point I really started to truly think about how I enjoyed what I studied, departing from my previous state of being burned out from school more so because I thought it was stupid, and it would be much quicker for an employer to simply teach me how to do a job without wasting several more years of my life (the signalling theory - college doesn't prepare you for your job, but the piece of paper is a method of signalling to an employer that you can go through the motions and graduate). At that point, I had already committed myself to the workforce after graduation, and due to a reluctance to relocate because of my long term relationship at that time, I landed in an industry I knew nothing about and cared little for. Insurance is not a bad industry, on the contrary, I think what I do is a lot better than many things I could be doing right now. But back then, all it served as was a job in an industry I didn't want to be a part of all because I made a decision based on a relationship that ended. Regardless of if I was upset about my job being miserable, and rest assured, there were periods of time when it was miserable, or just how I got there, it weighed on me.
Now here's where I suppose I'll really turn on the candor - no reason to stop now, right? Somewhere along the way my mentality changed. It went from wanting to improve my life by bettering myself in new ways, and using this as a "I may not like what I do for a living, but it enables me to do other things when I'm not working", to "I need to use these things to escape this hell I exist in 40-60 hours a week in". At that point, the things I did took on a different purpose. Initially I worked out because I enjoyed being healthy, and I wanted to have good fitness for playing tennis (or after experiencing knee troubles, just to be fit in general). I took up photography as a means to replace the hole left where tennis was. I enjoyed doing it at concerts and escaping into nature. I started dieting to try and better shape my physique. I decided to go to Europe and took up learning French. I also participated in making a movie as a fun project and learning experience. Then it all got twisted. The working out and dieting became extreme; I didn't necessarily do it because I enjoyed it, but because I had to to keep looking better. Someone had suggested I could go into modeling. Hey! Modeling is an escape from office work! All the while I could keep up with my photography. I know full well making money doing photography is more business than it is the quality of your photos, which is where I felt I had a leg up. And I was learning a lot about film, too.
"Surely I could throw all these things against the wall and see what sticks, right? Just do it all! Oh, and keep taking those exams at work; no use in stopping halfway through your certification, but hurry up, you have to finish quickly because the sooner you finish, the sooner you can sit out 12 months so you don't have to pay back any of the test fees. You've got to learn French by the time you go to Europe, hurry up! Besides, what if you want to live in Europe? You should be multi-lingual. Europe is better than the U.S., and it could make you forget about your job here..."
And that's how it went. It all became needing to use the things I did as a way out of the life I had convinced myself I hated instead of doing them for enjoyment. I'll acknowledge here that people can go out and change things should they set their minds to it. I am no different. In order to do so, though, it requires a tremendous deal of determination, and you have to be willing to take risks. I wasn't willing to take a risk; I wasn't going to quit my full time job that provided the standard of living I was accustomed to to try and dedicate myself completely and entirely to another pursuit. Instead, I just tried to do a little of everything and hope I got lucky...or at least that's what I told myself. By that time, who knows what my mind really wanted. The constant juggling, the pressure, the stress, eventually it all blew up in my face, and I am still today recovering from it several years later. A lot has happened in that period of time. I've definitely become wiser and more self aware, but there are still lingering impacts. You see, the series of events I just mentioned are why I now have an aversion to photography. My mind still today shies away from the things I did back then. I sparingly do photography, I end up throwing out spinach salad if I buy it because I cannot bring myself to eat it after eating it so much for that period of years. I haven't worked out in over two years. I've not resumed learning French (or even decided that it still makes sense to). And for a while, it upset me that I shy away from all these things. I've come to find, though, that it shouldn't. I'm still finding my way and learning about myself each day, and I know that the self-loathing, no matter how hard it may be to escape sometimes, is not healthy, and I am not going to do it anymore. I've resolved to it. If that means not pushing myself to do things before I am ready, so be it. I am confident that I will find the path that makes sense for me. I've been slow to do it, but it's going to happen. I can feel myself approaching normal.
Approaching Normal is the name of a Blue October album - it's probably the start of the decline in their musical quality (although the last album is more mellow and is a departure from the more raw sound of previous albums. I don't want to come across as a "they changed they sound" complainer; it's prior to this album that I felt their music started declining, not just that I didn't like the new sound as much), but there are definitely some good songs off of the album, ones that I, and many others, can relate to. It's the little things that I notice improving. Part of getting a new place has helped, as it's a fresh start, and I now I have a strong incentive to make the place nice. I'm back to immediately doing dishes after eating or spending extra time to put items away. I'm determined to not let myself fall into complacency with the upkeep of the unit, and in time I think that's going to translate more and more into other aspects of my behavior. A little confidence and motivation goes a long way. I know I have to get back to the point where I push myself more than I do now, and finding the balance between not pushing enough and pushing too much is going to be a delicate process, but I have more belief in myself to accomplish that than I have for a long time. With that, I'll end with a song that is actually off their latest album.
The beauty is
I'm learning how to face my beast
Starting now to find some peace
Set myself free
Today
I don't have to fall apart
I don't have to be afraid
I don't have to let the damage consume me
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