Sunday, September 1, 2013

Epiblogue

I suppose you could consider this an epilogue or maybe a P.S. at the end of a letter, but I finally downloaded all of my pictures from this trip from my iPhone to my computer to be backed up.  While they were being imported, I got to relive each experience I found photo-worthy in 2-second intervals.  It basically tore me up to the point of tears.

After getting back, I felt displaced.  I felt like I didn't belong here, but I figured once we moved into a house instead of the small room in my dad's basement that we came back to, I'd feel more settled.  We moved into my sister's rental home which has three bedrooms and a full, unfinished basement and started the unpacking process.  It was enough to stay distracted for a while, but it wasn't feeling like home.

The house was huge.  We had too many clothes, too many things.  We went through an odd crisis mode and decided to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  We became ruthless with our things and threw it out into the garage for a garage sale.  We held a massive sale, and anything we didn't sell for ridiculously low amounts of money, we gave away.  After selling for a full day, we still gave away 18 boxes, 5 garbage bags of things and some furniture.

We came back into the house, and our jaws dropped at the piles of junk still packed in our basement. We settled into the rest of the house, and basically ignored the fact that that part of the house existed.

We started getting work again, which was good because a lack of work for a month meant a lack of income for two or three.  We panicked a little and said yes to everything.  We looked at our open schedule and filled it to the brim.  We took on too much, but we didn't realize it at the time.

We poured ourselves into work, finding more conflict than usual which was disconcerting.  We don't fight.  We don't get on each other's nerves.  What the heck was happening?  We went through four months of bunk beds in a living space the size of our current closet without an issue, and now we're on one another.

Things weren't settling.  We were a month back, two months back, three months back, and things didn't feel right.  I piled on even more work.  I felt bad for people who needed the help, so I agreed to more work.  This didn't feel like home.

We were supposed to have answers.  It was supposed to feel good to come back.  What are we doing with our lives?  What impact do we want to have on the world?  How do we want to live out however many days we have left?  Not spread too thin, that's for sure.

It's time to slow down for a moment.  It's time to soul-search a bit.  There are many people whom we love and respect in our life that our giving us their answers, but they disagree with one another.  Matt and I don't know what we want.  We've lost sight of all future goals, which is so strange because we came back from the trip with a heart full of them.  We've jokingly been calling this our quarter-life crisis, but I think it truly is a crisis of priorities.

I'm thinking about continuing the blog.  I don't know who the heck reads this thing, but it's helpful to have a place where I can lay down my thoughts in a way that I'd be willing to have other people hear them.  In fact, it's one of the recommended therapies for impostor syndrome - which, I've been told to consider.

Most people don't like showing weakness or vulnerability.  I might say I'm one of those people, however, I also hold the trait which I will coin the "I'll-show-you syndrome".  I perform best under the doubt of others.  It's not really pressure to perform, but doubt in my abilities.  "I'll show you," I think to myself when I'm told I can't do something.  It got me playing the drums, exercising, playing sports, studying film, starting our own business, and now, I'm far too encouraged for forward momentum.  Can someone stop believing in me, and help me out here?

I don't want to leave Colorado.  I like it here, but I'm not sure the current "here" is the most conducive place to be challenged.  My current thinking is to seek out a group of creatives who will challenge me to bounce back into my old self - creatives who will inspire me to be a better everything.  Let the search begin...