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1:55 am - 07.17.2009
So IS This Life \"Perfect Enough For Now\" Or ISN'T it?

So Is This Life "Perfect Enough For Now" Or Isn't It?

I am not having fun these days.

It probably goes without saying that it's not much fun to be worried about money all the time, but I'm going to say it anyway - It's not much fun to be worried about money all the time.

And I find myself mentally rebelling against that last entry I wrote - A life where I rarely socialize, never date, and can't "buy things I'd like" or "go places I might enjoy", is "not perfect, but it's perfect enough for now"?

Really?

I didn't think I was doing it at the time, but clearly, I was bending myself into some pretty odd shapes in order to be "positive", and make what's, in reality, a pretty sad life "not so bad".

Or maybe not.

(Bear with me - I'm trying to figure out what the problem is here...)

I do think it's possible to find pleasures in an existence that, by most measures, would be pretty "minimal" - I don't have a lot, but it is nice that I have a roof over my head and food to eat, and even a few niceties like the Internet access I'm using right now.

Saying, basically, that "the life I have right now - while lacking a great deal - is not all bad" was not a lie.

But I feel myself rebelling against what I wrote, particularly that too-cutesy line, "Not perfect, but perfect enough for now".

Cause that's bullshit.

(This reminds me - I've been thinking, for quite awhile actually, about the literary device of "The Unreliable Narrator". It's something I mean to write about at great length in an upcoming entry. But anyway...)

A couple things prevent the life I currently live from being "perfect enough for now".

1. I really want the things I wrote about that this life does not afford me - I really and truly do.

2. I'm not succeeding enough to actually sustain this "perfect enough for now" lifestyle - How can a lifestyle be "perfect enough for now", when you're afraid of losing it at any given time?

3. I think to be happy with this "minimalist" existence (That I'm fearing could become even more "minimalist" at any given time), I need to feel some "forward momentum" in terms of my goals. And I've been "dead in the water", acting wise, for all of 2009 so far (And that's after a decidedly lackluster 2008).

I could go on, but I trust you're getting the gist of it.

This is not actually how I meant this entry to go when I started (And now, I'm running out of time and energy to continue)...

What I meant when I said "I'm not having fun" was basically that "I'm not acting, I'm not doing anything I'm good at, and I'm not really enjoying myself with these classes I'm taking" (Partially because of the money drain, partially because of the pressure - if I turn out to just not be good at improv and/or stand-up, I'll have spent a couple thousand dollars I don't actually have, and it will have done my career absolutely no good at all - and partially because I'm just not enjoying the struggle).

I need to figure out how to enjoy learning, how to not make it such a pressurized environment, how to "have fun with it", etc.

I've thought about either, 1. taking a "hiatus" after my current classes are over, and maybe trying to find a play to do (Lately I've been wondering if that's what I should have been doing all along), and/or, 2. trying to figure out something I could do while I'm taking these classes, where I could just have fun, without feeling like I have to struggle and "learn stuff".

Like...karaoke, maybe.

It's grown late, and I should go to bed.

I think it's actually inappropriate that I should be content with this life - I should want more for myself, and I should expect more of myself.

For stand-up class, when I was writing "premises" about "Being Broke", one of the things I wrote was, "What's scary about being broke is watching your dreams get smaller and smaller".

That least entry was the entry of a man whose dreams are getting smaller and smaller.

And if that's what I'm mentally rebelling against, I'm okay with that - It shows me I'm still alive.

 

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