Assessing the Apocalypse #1
Aimless Ambition
Few feelings match the ecstasy of a new endeavor. The potential, the excitement, the dopamine; it’s a party in my brain and everyone’s invited.
This jolt, this muse, this spiritual call to action is fleeting for most. Especially me; I dwell where stories will go instead of finishing the first scene/panel. What does it matter if this concept holds up to a potential “Season 5” if I can’t finish the pilot?
To that end, I’ve learned the perils of working against the grain of how I work naturally. To that end’s end, inspiration is for amateurs. Right?
Like with anything else, my feelings are conflicted.
In the last year or so I’ve quasi-developed a hollistic approach to my creativity that essentially boils down do “I do what I want when I want”.
No longer do I stare down blank documents in a game of chicken that lasts as long as the window of free time I’m afforded. I rarely win.
So what’s a girl do when she’s all dressed up with nowhere to go?
On one hand this experience reminds me that despite the greater everything else grinding my nervous system into a fine powder, I’m still alive in here. There is a voice that demands to cut through the din and I am obligated to honor it’s wish to bring you…something. But what?
Sure there’s lots of projects I’ve started, but that’s not where I’m feeling the pull. The pull I’m feeling is in all directions, so I often wind up doing nothing instead. It brings to mind my layoff back in 2017 and indeed the ongoing layoffs across various industries . This news came less than two months after learning I was going to be a father.
Ambition in this context, is an understatement, yet there was not more to do than submit application, which anyone who’s been thrust into sudden survival mode will tell you, can only be done for so long before the really bad intrusive thoughts start sounding like a better alternative to manually re-entering my resume for the 15th time.
What then to do with the surge of need, want, urgency? How do you pursue that while also fending off feelings of failure, chemical imbalances, and a world that treats you with appropriate levels of insignificance?
Nebulous is the name and nature of the feeling. What is a nebula but a nursery for celestial bodies that take eons to form a cohesive self?
Even stars don’t last forever; we all return to stage one at some point.
This isn’t stagnation. It’s agonizing, incremental growth that rivals that of the universe’s own expansion. Raw materials that need to be cured and molded by tender touch and thoughtful consideration.
Even though it feels like the walls are closing in; there’s time. Stop trying to convince yourself there isn’t. I give Aimless Ambition 4 Existential Crises out of 5.
Read the last entry here!