experience

i've spent a lot of time this week complaining and feeling sorry for myself. dwelling on the ways my new friendships have fell short. harping on loneliness. not much sleep. i've convinced myself how lonely i am, and have lived accordingly.

when you're lonely, you take everything personally. you are just waiting for an excuse to pile on to your self-imposed sadness. it can be hard to move sometimes.

last night, as a sat yet another night holed up in my room wrapped up in my feelings, i began receiving call after call from the close friends of yesterday. i guess that diminishes these people...my old besties started hollering.

they filled me up. why i was expecting friendships that i've put a fraction of the effort into compared to my closest relationships to do the same for me as my oldest friends, i'm not really sure. of course the new people in my life can't quite do what the older ones have. they don't share an inch of the experiences we have compared with the people who shaped me as a younger man.

you hear growing up from your elders about the importance of patience. once you think deeper on the issue, you realize that patience really goes hand-in-hand with experience.

my sister is getting married in november. recently she was asking me about who i wanted to invite, kind of a covered way of seeing if i wanted to bring my boyfriend or not. after thinking about it for a while, we talked and agreed that dropping the bombshell of bringing my partner around for the first time at her wedding wasn't fair to anyone, including me.

i'm totally okay with this decision. the door is still open. what i do want, though, is for her and my family to have an experience with me being in a successful relationship. it's not so much about patience and time, as it is about exposing them to real time dealings with meeting someone i love and feeling and seeing my happiness.

people have to experience things for themselves in order to understand. talk is cheap sometimes. you have to live it.

the experiences i have with my new friends don't even scratch the surface compared to what i have built with my old ones. i can't expect these people to do the same things as my oldest friends, because we don't really know each other as well. we haven't been through the same challenges. i have to accept that.

it's not about holding on to the old, or embracing the new. it's once again about accepting the now. right now, x and y are visible in my life. i have to create new experiences if i want to get anything out of them. bunkering up in my room won't do anything but sink myself deeper.

home

home is comfort. support, for yourself. i had a great home growing up. there were ups and downs, as with every family. divorce, poverty, wait, a little money! broke again, remarriage, just to scratch the surface without going on a tangent...

but i always had my territory. i had my lot to till. my parents were good in the way of creating an atmosphere of aesthetic peace. i could retreat to my room, where i had my STUFF. there was a wonderful gathering area, full of music, a proper dining room flowing with southern comfort food.

approaching college, and my first real taste of having to cultivate my own space, i had so many ideas of what i wanted to do inside whatever four walls i landed in. i bought posters, speedracer bedsheets, the works. within two months, my dorm room was a disaster apparently brought on by daily conniptions so i fled for my parents house at every opportunity. i also began claiming other peoples' homes as my sanctuary.

it took me a long time to realize the importance of the new home, wherever it was. still, i hadn't the gumption to turn my room/dorm/apartment/house into my own. throughout college, my room was an open suitcase and a mattress on the floor.

this continued for years. i never stayed in a space for too long, which mirrored my social life and many areas of my emotional angst. even if i had my own place where i would pay rent, i never hung out there. i hated my room, everywhere.

i never took the time to cultivate my own space, make it my own, make it somewhere that was completely me.

in denver, i almost stumbled in to finally having a room that screamed "JJ!"

the previous tenant left many of her belongings to give me a head start. lamps, for the great reader uses them, quirky wall danglies, sage nailed above my bed to ward off the spirits, of course.

slowly i arranged and rearranged, gathered pieces to my puzzle. i look around at the space i inhabit now with pride. i love it here. it might be the first home since i left my parents' nest that i truly feel is of me.

i guess i never wanted to accept that i needed my own room. i was so attached to what i created in my parents' landing, and always figured that to be my true home. everywhere else was a hostel. in the back of my mind, i knew that anywhere i went i wouldn't stay long.

in keeping with my infinite theme of balance here at postandeason, the joy and peace my new home has created has also presented an interesting dilemma. i never want to leave! i have found that the comfort i always sought through the eyes of my open suitcase, yet in some ways i have withdrawn from social settings. anytime i leave my place now, i feel like i'm heading back to college. this, in part, is also due to the fact that i am living outside of louisiana for the first time in my life. which, in turn, is partially responsible for the utter necessity that brought on my creating a home for myself in the first place.

circles, my friends. now the coin has been flipped. i told you the grass isn't always greener. every solution creates an entire new set of problems, which is why you start dying the minute you stop asking questions. you deteriorate the instant you think you have it figured out.

to go out or to stay home? whatever strength used to carry me into meeting new people is now a crutch and a hiding spot. which would i rather? whatever ... it's just fascinating the way things work. i could talk in circles at length on this topic, and never come to a be-all-end-all. that's the beauty of this whole thing.

who are you?

i've never been one to hold grudges. at least, i've never been good at them.

the most i've learned about grudges is from interactions with my mother. we could have a knock-down-drag-out, and within minutes, we're apologizing to each other. i just can't handle things being uncool. it's immature and maturity. it's positive and negative.

there's a fine line between standing up for yourself and holding a grudge. at some point during the hold, you realize the negativity is seeping into everything. is it a sign of weakness to let go? is forgiveness for pussies?

these are questions i seek the answer for. i want to stand up for myself, i want others to hold their ground for what they believe.

my mom says the best revenge is living well. again--truth. and yet, severely lacking. why do we seek revenge in the first place?

why is it so hard to forgive?

much harder than forgiving others, is forgiving ourselves. i've never battled with anyone so begrudgingly as i have had to with myself. everyone fucks up. mistakes surround us and breathe in our world. who's to hold a grudge? he who hasn't failed?

with some people, i can try and try and it will never be good enough. some people want words, others want results. but all i can do is live the way i'm supposed to. to do the next right thing.

when i start living for others is when i falter. if i could commit to myself as some commit to their grudges, i doubt there would be anything to hold onto.

i don't know what people want, from me or for themselves. i do know that living in the past or the future is missing the point. only bring the past if you are going to build from it.

again, it's about balance. we can't forget what we've done, or where we're going. more importantly, we absolutely cannot forget where we are, right now. right here.

i wish a lot of things in the past didn't happen. but, what would i be without them? i don't want to know. for all the times i've fallen, i've gotten up each time. is it more important to remember the fall? i think not. i try to attach myself to the resiliency, and build from that. otherwise, i'm broken, and i can't live like that.

i'm not one to tell anyone how to forgive or what to forget. who are you?

what do you really want?

these 'twenty-something' columns are getting old, huh?

college didn't prepare us for the real world

we can talk and talk ... poverty. loneliness. angst. jealousy.

some of us let our emotions run rampant. others 'accept' them, live like 'normal' people. most of them constantly crave the other life. the grass isn't necessarily always greener, it's just something else to think about.

we get so caught up in our routine (if you have one). what we are supposed to do. heeding the advice of the man, or woman, or our parents, big brothers...

then one day, we realize we are old. we start to distance ourselves from the people who always taught us how to live. our parents become our peers. i don't think we entirely break from the omnipresence that comes with being an infant. psychologically, infants eventually accept that they are not, in fact, the rocking chair. or their mom's tit. it takes far more than that initial realization to truly understand the meaning of humility, our own uniqueness, mortality, and love.

for so many years, i looked at the world as my playground. my bouncy demeanor and fun-no-matter-what attitude was charming to most. i didn't believe it though. i did what others wanted me to believe. i became what everyone wanted, and sometimes needed.

in college, despite some claims to the contrary, i was so wrapped up in what everyone else was doing that i spent little-to-no time on my personal growth. i was so busy all of the time that i really never questioned my place. somehow i maintained some semblance of responsibility, yet i was essentially at the same maturity level when i left as i was when i enrolled. sure, i learned substantially about faith, relationships, theology, and boundaries, but i lacked the skills to put into play anything i had soaked in.

after college, i spent years talking the talk, and never walking the walk. i refused to accept who i was. i never acknowledged the need to truly gather some cold, hard facts about myself. i could give you the best advice, the words you needed, but never turned them on myself because i didn't have a clue who i was. i didn't want to know.

fresh off my 26th birthday, a few things have become clear. i won't go into detail on all the things i've learned and how they've changed my life BLAH FUCKGNGING BLAHH.

what sticks out most is there is no possible way to grow as a person, spiritually, emotionally, in any real capacity without being extraordinarily honest with yourself about who and where you are.

you might think it'd be easy to be honest with yourself, there aren't really any physical consequences to lying to yourself or not thinking about things that bother you. but, if you stay in that fog, it gets thicker and thicker every minute. it has taken me days to realize the smallest things about my life. it will take a significant amount of patience and time to really start to see and feel these changes. the movement and growth that i want and need.

my soul is begging me for them, clamoring at me every other second while comfort and habit pick up where growth leaves off. though a pretty balanced war considering the math and numbers, comfort brings tanks and air-strikes to the battlefield while change's General is the dali fucking lama.

why am i not exploring? why am i not relentlessly pursuing the things i want?

because i only exist to persist. i engage to endure.

we think life is so difficult. and guess what, it is difficult!

in the opening sentence of The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck said:

"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

it's like waking up everyday and thinking: "shit, i have to deal with gravity again today."

i'm glad things aren't easy. 95% of my life i spend wishing things were easier. accordingly, 95% percent of my life to this point has been bullshit.

the rewards that come from working hard, creating, being resilient, and seeing actual growth in yourself are worth the tough times we go through. we make them harder by dwelling on them. but, when we see it, even get a glimpse into how amazing it is to actually be alive, we understand why good things take so much work.

it's time to stop complaining.

it's time to stop ignoring ourselves, running away from the things that make up our character, hiding our bodies, dumbing ourselves down and floating through life waiting on things to change.

it's time to stop surviving, and start to experience and live. the first step is to look in the mirror and ask: "what do you really want?"