Tag Archives: Fear

Waypoints And Forks In The Road.

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I’m a firm believer that there are markers in our journey through life. That we reach a fork in the road and we can take the easy route or the hard one.

I refer to these moments as waypoints.

They are particular moments of decision.

Like waypoints in video games, they are either where we can continue the journey or stop and do something else.

For too long I’ve fought against the journey, taken the easy road. It’s either been through alcohol to numb my senses or through straight up asshole attitude.

But I’ve begun to learn from all the times I took the easy route.

There are maybe two times in my life that I believe I’ve taken the difficult path.

When I started dating my wife and when we moved our family to Utah.

I’ve thought about these moments quite a bit as I follow the path of sobriety.

What I’ve learned is I either haven’t tried hard enough or it did things out of fear.

Fear of rejection, fear of failure, and biggest of all for me, fear of abandonment.

That last one is bitch. I’ve felt like a lot of people abandoned me at one point or another for various reasons.

My wife is the only one whose stood by me through my alcoholism, my temper, my assholishness, and the mental breakdown I had in 6 years ago.

I’m getting to a point where I’m comfortable talking about these things. And I consider that the biggest breakthrough in my life.

There are still things I’m not ready to talk about publicly, but I am writing all of them down.

I hope you’re all doing well and that you’re following the path for you.

My path was constructed for who I am. Don’t let anyone say your path isn’t the right one. I listened to that shit for too long and it got me nothing but pain.

I’ve reached a new waypoint and it’s a difficult one.

This journey is rough.

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I’ve been sober for a month and some people don’t understand that. They see me and think, “he doesn’t have a problem”.

Maybe not, maybe yes.

I drink often enough and think about my next drink when I’m not drinking. That’s why I stopped.

I can’t go to AA because I lost any belief in a higher power 20 years ago.

I believe when we die that’s it. The lights go out. I do believe in fate however.

I believe we’re destined to follow a certain path. We reach the larger arc of those paths through waypoints. Little things that trigger butterflies at the moment of decision.

It’s that fork in the road moment. We can take one path or another. It’s these waypoints that create our lives.

I’ve hit a few waypoints that changes the direction of my life, for good or not so good.

I don’t feel I’ve reached a waypoint in my life in a long time.

Our move from Las Vegas was a natural progression of where we wanted to raise our kids. It wasn’t a waypoint moment.

In my writing, I’ve never felt it and maybe that’s why I’ve struggled so much. I want that butterflies in the stomach feeling. That I haven’t reached that stage in my writing is distracting.

Sobriety feels like a waypoint. Maybe it’s a step towards a better understanding of my writing? I’m not sure. But a month in, it feels different than when I stopped last fall.

I’d like to get that feeling with my work. I want to be excited about it. Don’t get me wrong, a new project excites me but I rarely get that butterflies in the stomach feeling with it.

Maybe I’m trying to hard. Maybe I haven’t hit that magic point.

But I think I’m more involved with finding a waypoint than working.

Taking it on…

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When we see the world a certain way it clouds our mind and we try to adjust it to a world view.

It’s this word view that changes, or should.

It’s not the words of others we should take upon the mantle of who we are but the truth of who we are, and who we’ve always been.

It’s the rights of our souls or fabric of our humanity that blesses us and we take it upon our lives as if it’s the word of some sage or soothsayer.

Our breath, our very lives are the choice of our mind, body, and soul.

Our mind may try to resist what our soul wants and it’s only in the death of a part of our soul that the mind wins.

But the body. It knows. When we get sick, is it because of some bug, possibly, but there may be a deeper cause. Our mind.

Within our mind and it’s many machinations, we sometimes learn to trust things we shouldn’t, believe in people who aren’t trustworthy and we falter because of that.

We suffer through our lives because our true calling isn’t one of the mind but of the soul.

Our mind can resist for our lifetime, but why should we let it when we can live such a fulfilling and engrossing existence?

Do as your soul wishes.

The Revelations…

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Each day I wake up, have my coffee, get my words done and read.

Some of those days are filled with swapping between writing and doing the outline for the project.

I’ll see the end point of the story, sometimes. But while I’m writing I’ve always had a notebook close by. It’s how I work and it works for me.

There are other days when I just write. I’ll make notes on characters, their issues, what’s going on in their heads, but those days are creating days.

They are the heavy lifting days.

As I’ve grown as a writer I continue to grow outside of the writing desk.

It feels weird to say it but quitting has been at the forefront of my mind lately.

It’s something that when I have those heavy lifting days occurs to me.

They are the work days. The hard ones where the words come slow and the coffee never hits the spot.

But I know I’ll keep writing as surely as I know I’ll continue to have depression issues for the rest of my life. I’m working through those.

It’s the writing and reading that give me peace. It’s the reading that gives me guidance when I have none.

The world comes at me harder than it seems to those outside my head. They oftentimes don’t understand but it does.

I’ll keep writing because I feel it’s the only thing I’m truly good at. When I stop for any length of time, my mind doesn’t work properly.

I know it’s rough and I know I’m getting better and that’s all that matters to me.

I write for me now, though I do throw a few bones to people in my writing.

For the most part I write what scares me, what troubles me.

Writing is difficult but as with anything else, the effort shows the results and I’ve been putting a lot of effort into stories.

I hope you’re having a good day and I’ll talk about something(not sure what) on Wednesday.

Coming to terms with addiction and finding my way.

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As I said on Wednesday, a game took away from my writing time.

Oddly enough, this initially happened when I went sober the end of July.

I swapped one addiction for another.

Instead of blinding myself with alcohol, I shut the world off and buried myself in leveling a character online.

This led me to taking up the bottle again the end of October.

I did this for many reasons but mainly because I have always needed to bury my emotions.

It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

As a teenager, I would keep to myself, not wanting to let the world know how depressed I was. That led to issues with relationships in high school.

I wasn’t mature enough to handle a relationship with myself, much less another person.

Thankfully, as I got older, met my wife, who has kept me safe from my worst tendencies, I was able to understand a few of those things.

But there was always something to subvert, numb, or chasten myself with.

It was either drowning myself in a bottle, burying myself in the pages of a book, delving into online games. In my blindness to these things I kept myself safe from pain.

I was obliterated at times because of family problems.

The bottle has been there since my late teens.

The feeling that one thing gave me led me to run off the tracks and nearly destroyed my marriage.

I try to keep myself safe and I have a tendency to bury myself in things that aren’t as good for me as I would like them to be; the bottle, video games, and other distractions.

I feel it’s necessary to bury myself in one thing that will help me get through all of this. My writing.

Writing gives me a similar high as alcohol, without the side effects.

I have this tendency to latch onto something and it can control and affect my entire world.

I’ve chosen to latch onto my writing and work it for all I can.

I’m sober again and though I’ve fallen I got myself back up.

I pick up the pieces and find new things daily. This journey will lead me to better places and better states of mind. Both of which are needed.

I’ll do my best to write for myself and will continue to write this blog.

The words are important and the message is as well.

I hope you’ll continue to read, continue to follow me on other platforms, but this is where I intend to spend my time.

I have Twitter and Instagram, but I’d rather use this blog. It gives me a bigger space and on days like today I need that.