The cynical optimist

The midnight bell chimes out in the darkness signifying the beginning of a new day, the house and much of my neighborhood is asleep, there is a silence that stretches out brushing up against the uncomfortable and I am in bed, unable to sleep because once again my thoughts are flying around in my head faster than I can even comprehend and as always, taking a moment to write allows me to corral them and even, if I’m lucky make sense of them.

So here is the highly anticipated 4th part of my stream of consciousness series, from here on out I write without a script. This will not be edited, so I hope in the end something at least sensible comes out of this.

2022 has been a weird year. For me it’s been a year of starts and stops. August seemed to take an eternity…September well, blink and it’s already almost over. This year has also been defined by turning 30. Over the past few months I’ve made several strides in becoming a fully realized human being. I’ve begun driving, building credit…I’m hitting milestone after milestone, but it all feels, I don’t know how to explain it. Empty maybe?

And it feels that way because most of the year I’ve also felt like I was in the middle of a storm. Being battered and bruised and thrown about by the winds of change. I’ve been searching for a new job, and getting wave after wave of rejection, and it’s beginning to weigh me down. I seem to have so many questions and so few answers, and it just feels like every step forward is a fake out, to show the world I’m moving forward, when in reality I’m still exactly where I’ve always been.

And maybe this will all pass, maybe things will finally begin to fall into place. Maybe the storm will pass and I’ll be able to see the path laid out in front of me, and I’ll finally understand my place in this world, maybe I’ll be able to understand myself more. But all that is yet to be seen, yet to be realized.

So much of the world seems to be in flux lately from personal questions that I haven’t even fully grappled with myself, to politics, to war, to climate change nothing seems peaceful, everything seems to be I’m a tumultuous state and maybe all of this is me just picking up on that. Who knows? If I have learned anything, it’s that I know nothing.

But I’m going to keep moving, I’m going to figure it all out, and on days like tonight when things seem a bit overwhelming. I’ll write, I’ll reach out to people. I have to learn to allow myself space. I have to allow myself to not have answers. I’ll be alright. I’ll hold the hope that I have, close to my chest and walk on. Because in the end that’s the only real choice I have..