They say a lot changes in a year, and maybe they’re right, lots has changed, yet at the same time everything’s pretty much exactly where I left off. But the one thing that I think has changed the most in the last year is that I had the most inspirationless year of my life yet. This not only confuses me but brings me great sadness, I haven’t managed to sit down and write anything in a year, so what happened?
Honestly nothing, I just lived everyday the same as I did going from one day to the next just living, but somewhere along the lines I stopped really living, I stopped taking photos of the important moments, I stopped feeling creative, I stopped caring about my achievements and where I was going. Yes, yes I know that all sounds very depressing but honestly it wasn’t, it was a pretty carefree year but the think the most positive thing to come from it was that I found some inspiration in my lack of inspiration. Such an inspirationless time sparked inspiration for the first time in a year and it’s because I realised something, its okay to be in a rut, in a writers block, in an inspirationless existence. It’s okay to not write or create something, and it’s all okay because we’re only human. We’ve come to set ourselves these expectations of what we expect from ourselves and each other and those expectations have become so unrealistic. Some of the best works, the best things in life come organically and why should we sit with the aim of creating something for the sake of creating when really the best things are the things you don’t even have to think about. No one ever told you to fall in love with the person that you consciously have to go out of your way to make an effort to love. Instead, they tell you to love the person that you couldn’t imagine not loving, the the kind of love that’s consuming and requires no thought at all. And dare I be the one to say it but I think we’ve lost that sense of freedom, the carefree aspect that life has to offer, we have become so obligated to not only to one another but to this sense that we owe everything we do to something or someone else. We treat a lack of inspiration and drive as a bad thing but sometimes you do just need to stop and slow down. I felt like I failed by not writing, by giving up so soon but by slowing down and stopping I realised that what means the most to me is writing things that feel genuine, writing because I love writing and not because I have a duty to produce content. In times as confusing as now I think it is more than acceptable for people to lose their inspiration, but instead of allowing them to pressure themselves we should encourage them to find their inspiration from what can only be described as an inspirationless time. You’re only human so stop putting too much pressure on yourself, sometimes you need a shadow in order to see a little light.
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Wanderlust, it’s a funny little world, once heard it sticks in the back of your mind forever. Most people keep in their head to bust out a fancy new word, others use it to describe the desire of travel and some only enjoy it for the scrabble score. The word itself is not what this post is about, in fact the word only merely scratches the surface of what I want to discuss. In case you are not aware wanderlust is in a way is state of mind, it’s the intense desire to want to travel. Yet for me I want so much more, wanderlust is just the beginning.
So life as I know it, well where to start on not a very long story. I have grown up in a small town, so small in fact we only have three places you can go out to dinner and there is one clothing shop. As a child it was great all my friends lived close by, I could walk to school with them and asking for a friend to come over for dinner was at least a once a week occurrence. But as I grew older I noticed something, whenever it hit summer and we were suddenly free from school my friends disappeared for a few weeks and came back with amazing stories, happy as can be. I’ve always wanted to know what that was like, to go away from normality for a couple of weeks and return home filled with experiences I would never have gotten otherwise. When I hit twelve I finally did it, my first holiday, to see my family in America and my goodness was I excited. After two weeks we came home and returned to normality and that’s pretty much all I can say for my travelling experience. But it is not enough, I sit here now feeling like I did as a child, curious about where everyone is going and why am I not there too? It is just this itch I cannot scratch. Do not get me wrong my parents did everything they could, they filled me up with memories but looking back there is something missing and I think it is only now I realise that travel has been something I have needed rather than wanted. Like I said I come from a small town so imagine never seeing beyond those same streets, houses and parks. I feel small and lost like there’s this whole world out there and I am there, I live there after all but I don’t feel a part of it. It is the same feeling you get when you’re at the party but you don’t feel like part of the party. Social media is not a good influence either because I am now so aware of the world I am missing out on, I look at my life and the culture I have seen and it’s so Vanilla. I feel clueless about anything other than a quaint British life. I need some fresh air, some new scenery, something new to fill my mind; I need some sort of light. I feel trapped by an imaginary cage and the walls I think have been slowly building up throughout my life without even knowing. I don’t want to travel. I need it, I need to be educated in the wide culture that’s out there. Wanderlust, it’s a funny little world, once heard it sticks in the back of your mind forever. Most people keep it in their head to bust out a fancy new word, for me? Wanderlust is that itch I just cannot scratch. Imagine this… It is 1968 and Martin Luther King Jr has been assassinated, the Kray twins are being arrested and the Zodiac killer has started his rampage. Civil rights within America is starting to advance more than previous, the third ever heart transplant was completed, France have held the Winter Olympics and the first ever Big Mac has gone on sale. The Boeing 747 is finally launched and the Vietnam War is raging on. Yet amongst all this success, victory, defeat and chaos you were born. Somewhere in Illinois where the weather was hot and your family all gazed upon you as you finally entered the world. Your older brother finally had someone to play with and you had no idea where life was going to take you. On this day the world was changed for you had started a journey which would be one hell of a ride. It is now fifty years later and you have lived a life that was definitely worth living. You have travelled the world, from your home in America, to England where you created a family, to South Korea where you went for important business meetings and experienced a whole new culture. You learnt how to drive and smashed your first car Betty into the back of a lorry; you also owned a lime green motorbike which had seen better days by the time you were done with it. Since then you’ve had more cars than you can count but there are two which will always stand out, your first ever white Porsche and your now current red Porsche. I remember the day you brought both of them home, the look on your face when you looked at one of your dream cars and realised all your hard work had paid off. I still laugh when I look back and see the pictures of you and me and remember you were a body builder, your muscles bigger than my head. Watching Toy Story together was our thing; we would cuddle and watch that all day if we had to because I couldn’t get enough of it.
Now although this makes your life look very extravagant and easy, makes it appear as if everything went smooth sailing and hardship never entered your life I know that is not true. You are one of the most emotionally strong people I know, you are resilient, and you fight harder than anyone else. You push yourself further than you should yet you always succeed. This is why you are an inspiration to me. They say age is a state of mind and that has never been truer when it comes to you, everything you do is not what is ‘typical’ for a man of your age and that makes you doing it even better. You’re my Dad and I am so lucky that you are. I hope your life is everything you’ve wanted it to be so far and I cannot wait to see what adventures you go on next. Thank you for everything. I will love you always. They say humans are born with only two fears, falling and loud noises. As many people overcome these due to the love of concerts and the adrenaline that comes from going over the top of a roller coaster, most of us still acquire other fears in our lifetime. We are often told that our fear is ‘silly’ or that it is ‘irrational’ but the issue with fear is that it is one of the most certain emotions we have in life.
When you feel fear you are certain of it, it feels so real and controlling, like a force pushing on you that you cannot escape. Irrational fears are not something that I take lightly because they can completely change a person. In reality should I have the fears that I do? No I shouldn’t but just because I shouldn’t fear them doesn’t mean that I do. I always use to say that my three greatest fears were moths, falling and death. They are my big three, the three that terrify me, the three that I know I will never get over. Yet recently I feel as if I have started to notice a fear I have always had but have never realised. Myself. I know it sounds odd to say that I fear myself but I do, I fear the power that my mind has over me. When I lie there at night unable to sleep because my mind is working 110% producing thoughts I didn’t even think I could have, or when my mind manipulates me into thinking I am nothing more than 3 inches tall and can be pushed around by the wind, it scares me. My mind is so complex and amazing; nothing will ever be able to be as complex as my mind, which is the essence of who I am. But I, just an average person cannot even begin to comprehend how to deal with how complex it is. So yes I fear my mind, I fear myself and as stupid as it sounds I know that I do, because I can feel that fear. So what am I to do next? Knowing that I fear myself gives me power to try and reclaim my own mind. It allows me that when I am in the middle of an anxiety attack to know it is nothing more than my mind manipulating me into feeling things that are not true. It is difficult, it is complicated and will I ever be able to stop fearing myself? Most likely not but even if I can for just a little while feel like I am able to think what I want and not what my subconscious is making me, then that is good enough for me. As far as change goes in life I admit I have never experienced that dramatic shift through which everything that was normal suddenly feels unfamiliar. I have experienced that subtle change, the daily changes that we all regard as fairly mundane and nothing to worry about. Not that change is something that I regard as being something that should be worried about. I welcome change and the opportunity to grow and develop from the sheltered life I have come accustomed to, yet despite welcoming this into my life I have never found that big change to happen.
Until now. Life has been fairly regular, the same day in and day out. But now I am faced with the unknown and this sense of being lost in a world full of order. This change does not fill me with fear but fills me with so many questions of how I ought to be feeling and how I ought to be coping with this change. As someone who has never been through the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another I find myself struggling to work out what normal is for me now. I think the thing about new chapters is that they appear daunting; they appear like something I am not prepared for or something that I should be intimidated by. Yet this is all false, I know deep down that I would not be heading for this new chapter if my previous one had not fully prepared me for what is next. But then who is to say you have to be prepared, life is about learning and growing and these new chapters and beginnings are all about allowing for you to become the best version of yourself that you can be. New beginnings are not about who you were or what the world was like or what it even may appear as right now. They are about change and self-growth. The world is always going to keep spinning and that means that with every spin change will be produced. Politics, religion and social class the fundamentals that everyone believes society is based upon will all change. Change is inevitable and everything will change whether it be gradually or all at once, but all that matters amongst all this change is that we stay true to who we are. We are the only people who are present every day of our entire lives, we are more sure about who we are even when we are in doubt about the choices we make. Change will affect you and your personality however the most important thing to remember is you can make a difference to this change. You can either let the unknown consume you and alter the person you have come to be completely, or you can embrace the change, welcome it with open arms. The thing about change is that you have a choice; change is brought about by amazing individuals doing exceptional things that make the ordinary become unordinary. So who is to say that you in your everyday life cannot take control of the change and become your own version of extraordinary? So now whilst I am faced with this feeling of the unknown and sense of being lost in this world of order I have come to realise that I am not alone, this whole world we have become accustomed to is also in a state of unknown and change. I am not fearful of what is to come but I am fearful of losing myself. Change is not something I want to rule my life and dictate who I am but what I want is to dictate how I let the change affect me. I want to be that extraordinary person who makes the ordinary become unordinary, even if I am only extraordinary to myself. |