Finally. Goddamnit.
I finally figured it out. Finally. Goddamnit.
I have these two papers. I was supposed to turn these things in over a year ago. Once I turn these papers in, I submit some paperwork and I'll get my provisional special ed license while I finish up my Master's at Washburn. The school gets reimbursed for my salary and everyone's behind gets covered.
These papers aren't the worst things in the world. In fact, I'm kind of interested in them, when I'm not more interested in a million other more important issues both for my job and for my policy thought and work and just life, generally.
But I have to do them to finish up the provisional license.
And I finally figured out today why I've been avoiding them like the fuckin' plague even though my job depends on them.
Because I fuckin' hate doing things I have to do is the truth. I mean I fuckin' hate to be forced to do things. With the most fevered, angry, passionate hate that you can imagine someone having about anything. Why? Because I love my work. And I want to love my work and my life. And this just fucks all of that up. It's seems like such a stupid and small thing, in retrospect. But I fuckin' hate being made to do things that I'm not convinced are worthwhile (though, like I said, I love my professors and there is much to learn in these papers; they just aren't the most interesting or important thing that I could be doing with my time. And I hate having to do stuff that I'm not sold on. And so I've dragged my feet).
So what's so complicated? Nothing, much, except that I've been trying to pretend all this time that I like the rules or that I like being made or forced to do things that I don't want to do more than I actually do so that I can have and keep a job and so I can get less hassle in my life.
But the truth, down deep, is that no matter how much I pretend, on the surface, that I like the rules or being responsible for things I have to do, I don't. Ever. I like being responsible. But not when I'm forced. It fuckin' drives me crazy, is the truth.
This is how repression fucks everything up. Because people start pretending that they feel a certain way but, underneath it all, they really don't. So they end up lying to themselves and others about wanting something that they don't really want or being something that they really are not. And what they really think or feel or are shows up in their behavior.
And all of the places in my life where I have been frustrated with myself, lately, have centered around this one inescapable reality: I hate following rules just because I have to and not based on some understanding of what the best course of action might be, when it's associated with the rules and when it's not.
And my serious and extreme procrastination has been because of this inescapable reality in my own thoughts and feelings that I haven't openly or more honestly acknowledged to myself and, hence, I have been acting out in my life.
That is how repression works. And that is why it makes us a constant mess of aspirations and realities that are perpetually falling short of our aspirations. Because who we really are sits underneath the surface, no matter how much we pretend to be something else for everyone else or to avoid sanction or to get something we want or any of the millionth ways that everyone - without expception; if you think you are an exception, you are lying to me and to yourself - manipulates and lies in the world, to themselves and to one another, in an attempt to pretend to be something they are not rather than committing themselves, more genuinely, to be the better person or have the better quality they seek.
And, tonight, I have shaken free this demon, it appears. By just acknowledging, openly, to myself and to others, my feelings, so that I can put them behind me and get to work and do what we all have to learn to do: to do those things that we do not want to do but which we have to do, out of circumstance, or that we are made to do, by someone forcing our hands. The latter is what I have been resisting. I'm getting over it, I think. And I have work to do.
But I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate overcoming an issue that has stood in my way for as long as I can remember (that I hope I've overcome, I must qualify).
Finally. Goddamnit.
Thank God for Jamie Cullum and Youtube for broadcasting his live performance. When you see someone love what they do as much as Jamie, you want to know what you have to do to have that kind of feeling in your own life. And I feel inspired, today, to love what I do as much as Jamie clearly loves his really outstanding musical abilities.
Thanks, Jamie.
Love,
Ben
