A few months ago I came to some conclusions that have been 25 years in the making, and one of the results is starting this blog.
Nearly as long as I can remember I have been trying to deal with my pain – but I finally realized that what was really going to make my life feel fulfilling was dealing with the boredom. That’s not a quick fix, nor is it intended as simple advice. But the story of my past couple years, I think, explains why it has been so freeing for me.
The Childhood Beliefs
I remember being around eight years old, riding in the car and talking to someone about needing to understand what my grand purpose was. I pondered how I would change the world, and was hurting and frustrated that I didn’t know how to do it. At just eight I already felt so much pain in my heart, and I believed with all my small self that I had to turn that into something useful to others in order to make the pain worthwhile, to make God good, to heal my heart, and to make myself feel worth continuing.
Over the years, I stopped worrying about making my life prove God was good, and I stopped believing my heart could heal. Whether the pain was worth feeling and I was worth continuing… those have always been up in the air, and this question of how I would affect the world is closely tied in. Could I make enough of a difference to make that irrevocably broken heart worth bearing?
Frankly, I’ve spent years believing that I could not be nor experience anything worth the weight of my pain. I had yet to feel enough happiness or love or self-value that could ever seem to balance the scales. And again, I simply didn’t believe my heart could ever be whole.
The Sea Change
Then on Solstice night, 2020, I did a group ritual with a bunch of magical weirdos like myself, which started a cascade of events over the past 21 months. A lot has happened. I had a near-psychotic break. I initiated a divorce. I started testosterone. I began dating again. I tried a ton of new things, and returned to some old hobbies. I’ve read more books than I had in the preceding five years. I got new diagnoses, and threw out old ones. The second and third years of the pandemic have, in short, been nothing less than utterly life changing.
Yet through all of that, the question that eight year old me was so upset about remained: what grand work was I here to do? Because while all the circumstantial change was showing me that there could be good things and preparing me to really do the deep soul work, I still held two essential beliefs: that my heart could not heal, and my pain had to become meaningful in order for me to keep living.
Then one night someone dear asked me two questions:
- What if your heart is already healing just by living and being connected with people who you love and love you in return?
- What if your pain is already meaningful simply because it affected you, and you and your healing are valuable enough to have made it meaningful?
What then? What if there’s no need for a grand goal because those things are true?
And I immediately knew: If I’m healing, and the pain already has meaning… then I’m bored! Bored as a ringmaster alone in a desert. I’ve spent so much time and energy trying to answer the meaning of my pain that I am doing next to nothing that makes me interested or keeps me stimulated. And a grand goal would be nice, sure, but it’s not the thing that will save me – it would just be a nice focal point for what keeps me interested.
The healing is already happening – and I’m working very hard to ensure it continues.
The Results and Moving Forward
So I’m left with the wonderful problem of being bored! Over the past couple months I’ve made some major life changes to remove some of the boring things and introduce more stimulating ones. I left a job and am working on building a life where money-making is interesting, like consulting/contracting work in process management (because I’m the kind of nerd who finds that fascinating). I’ve changed how my apartment is set up so that I have room to make art, and I’m trying more new things artistically.
As part of that, at long last I’m starting a blog with a simple goal: to be a venture I find intellectually stimulating where I can talk about the ideas, experiences, and hopes that keep me going.
I’m pretty sure it will take some time for acceptance of all this to really settle in my heart, but I believe it will. I look forward to whatever I find to do out of the pure joy of doing it. I still want to affect the world, I still care deeply about so many things, but I want to approach them from a place of fascination and play.
I hope you enjoy or get value from joining me on the journey!