Time after time...

Radar doesn't care for blogging...

"Days become weeks, weeks melt into months, and years pass by faster than ever..."

I'm back to my old habits of working late at night. I tried the whole thing of getting up earlier and attempting to be more efficient through the day. I think my oldest cat, Radar, is wanting me to head to bed because he keeps messing with my leg. He does this little tiny tapping with his paw on the back of my leg. Most of the time I find it to be fairly adorable unless I'm trying to focus on working on the computer or writing. The older I get the more I find that distractions become more and more present and plentiful. It may be that I find focusing on a task to be far more arduous than it was in years prior. It could also be that my cat is extremely tenacious and wanting attention. I think it's the attention thing he's seriously trying to get on my lap between me on the keyboard.

Coming back to things…

Over the years doing this blog I've had moments when a lot of time will pass between entries. I think it's a fairly common thing for a lot of people. Or at least it is among the spectrum of blogs and online journals that I follow. Sometimes it's a simple matter of lack of time, it could be the challenge of organization or inspiration in writing, or maybe just a long standing bout of forgetfulness. I have the propensity to embrace all three of those circumstances, sometimes at the same times.

It took me interacting with a specific brand that I hope to work with in the future to reignite my efforts on here. So I did a little bit of house cleaning, updated some pages, and decided since I was getting over a bout of food poisoning and didn't want to go to sleep at the moment, that I would stay up and get a new blog entry written up.

So far, so good.

Looking at the time…

A few days ago an old friend of mine had posted something on Instagram that not only resonated with me but really overwhelmed me in the moment. It's what led to me thinking about time. Now if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, or you've followed me on any of the other social media channels that I run, you probably already know that I often talk about the passage of time. As a professional artist, as a human being, and as somebody who relives nostalgia and history as big portions of my interests and hobbies.

But this specifically was more in regards to the idea of time melding into a longer linear format. It's something that I'm not a fan of at all, but is very much a part of most jobs, especially in the corporate world. For some people, it can be a comfort zone. Something that day in and day out becomes a friendly rut of repetition and familiarity. For the most part, it can become a formatted system of reliability that can lead to standardized paydays, cubicles that echo elements of one's home, and social circles that grow out of physical proximity and conversations about last weekend’s happenings.

For the short time that I'd worked in corporate America, I was very aware that although the structure of work and demands that existed allowed me to build a better version of skill sets because of the five days a week I spent using a lot of them, something still felt off.

It took a lot of trial and error for me to understand that as much as I tried to fit in, it just wasn't for me. But that really came to bear when I realized how calendar pages really flew by. White boards would announce upcoming birthday celebrations or holidays. And even though the number of days did not change, the passage of time seemed to become shorter and shorter. Literally days became weeks, and the weeks that became months melted into a year that seemed so similar to the one prior that it was apparent how painfully generic the passage of time was becoming.

So for a while I thought after I'd left corporate America, and left behind the few clients I had connected to that world, that I would be able to reclaim a sensible pacing to all the rest of my days ahead. To the contrary, that's not really been the case.

So you’re out of corporate, what now?...

Understand I'm not complaining. I was let go through downsizing from my last major corporate job, and made the decision to leave behind my last corporate freelance client. From a mental health standpoint both of those events were windfalls of positivity for me. Even with the challenge of a lack of steady income, I felt that I could breathe easier and the daily stresses I had all but disappeared virtually overnight.

But now I faced a different dilemma. Being a full time freelancer, is something that I've always dreaded and dreamed of. I'm my own boss, but I can be my own business loss as well.

Surprisingly when I thought I would gain back a lot more time, I found that the freedom to be able to do literally whatever I wanted, was the most unhinged thing that could happen to me. At first it was kind of cool. I could go shopping when I wanted. For the first time in my life I didn't have to report to a manager, make small talk, or have to worry about rush hour traffic. Those are some great positives. But the same thing that happened before, started happening again. Although this time, it wasn't just time slipstreaming by, there was a now painfully present void comprised of directionless energy. And although I had a massive amount of ideas and efforts I wanted to accommodate and complete, I was at a loss as to how to go about it!

It's similar to wanting to make artwork, or write something for your book, and all you have in front of you is a stark white blank page. The forefront of my mind reengaged an old idea that I've had play more and more often, the fact that freedom isn't as important to people as much as order and organization. Limitation and constraints can often lead to more focused creative energy and spontaneous liberation of thought when breaking out of pre formatted boundaries. But when someone is given free range to do anything, the feeling of being lost on the mat before you even take the first step is absolutely a real one.

Three more months…

I say three more months but it's less than that before 2025. I spent the last few months really engaged in what I expect out of myself and what I hope for the future. Some of this came from having spoken to friends of mine that own businesses and have one year to five year plans. I'm lucky if I can formulate situational awareness for the grocery list I need this week.

There have been intermittent days where the passage of time has absolutely debilitated me with crushing depression and anxiety. Which in turn, makes it even worse. It's bad enough to be a rock in a stream with water flowing around you, but I feel like that same rock with floodwaters from a hurricane now throwing me into directions I had no intention of ever heading towards.

The good thing is I'm not a rock. I have the ability to walk, to think, and to find a path to where I want to be in life for the rest of my creative days. While practicing mindfulness recently, I've come to the acceptance that there are things in life that I will never be able to do. Either because of age or money, time or other limitations. I'm beginning to be alright with that. But I also need to be alright with allowing myself to challenge every day, with obstacles that I choose to put in place so that my life is filled with experiences and events that not only helped me grow, but help me appreciate and fill the passage of time with the source of memories that seem to slow it down.

What do you do when it seems that life isn't slowing down?

- Mario, the Artisan Rogue