Stretched Thin

It's been a while since I wrote anything at all.  Anywhere, not just here on this blog.  It's been a while since I felt like I was productive or creative or a viable member of the human race.  I don't really know why I've been feeling this way entirely.  It's like this creeping feeling of time falling away from me.  I stand in the middle of a room and feel the echoes of all the things I didn't manage to get done screaming at me.  I wake in the morning, at least an hour after the time I'm used to waking up and immediately feel like I've done something egregiously wrong, like I've missed the most important moments of the day already.  Every time my eyes open, I bolt out of bed like I'm late for a life changing meeting.  Even though I have nothing really happening all day.  I wake with a sense of disgust at wasting my own time and potential.

It's a very strange and claustrophobic feeling.  And it's a feeling I think others are familiar with as well.  I've come to learn that the greatest battles a person fights in this life, the most insidious evils he faces, are all to be found in periods of idleness and inactivity.  That's when the demons come calling, the ones that dwell in the shadows of every mind.  This world of ours is getting so choked with distractions and methods of self-destruction that I worry very much for our sanity.  There are so many times I catch myself staring at my computer screen, scrolling the mouse randomly from one corner to another.  Doing nothing really, just lost in some kind of daze.  I'll open windows I don't want to see, I'll check email and Facebook barely a minute after I checked them last.  I'll start watching a show or a movie only to start doing something else and then something else.  I'll start a book, only to check my mail, only to open another book, only to return to the show, only to wander out to my balcony and rock against the railing.

Sigh.  No wonder I'm not getting any writing done.

My battle these days is to sit still and focused.  To regain my once legendary discipline.  I don't know if Bombay has tainted me or if I've become so consumed with the epic uncertainty of my profession as an actor or something in the stars these days.  I'm feeling stretched a little thin, as if I were being drawn across this city into corners and conversations that I had no desire to be a part of but from where I couldn't escape.  Trapped in parties with no one to smile at really, no one to talk to, certainly no one to love.  Driving through traffic that could break the spirit of any man everyday only to get to places I wanted to leave as soon as I get there.

But as insidious and chilling as this feeling has been these last few days.  I'm glad I've started to notice it and rebel against it.  I am a warrior of light and poetry.  I am happy, and I am employed and I am surrounded by love, at least when it's not PMSing or confused.  More than any of that, I really like who I am at this point in my life.  I cannot let this city, or this profession, or this malaise, or these planets or whatever the hell is making me feel this way get the better of all the things I'm capable of and destined for.

Tomorrow I shall wake up at dawn like I normally do.  I shall read a great poem, I shall write one as well.  I shall drink a perfect cup of tea.  I shall sing to my plants.  I shall make breakfast.  I shall work out like a machine.  I shall listen to music all morning.  I shall finish the book I started.  I shall start work on the book I need to write.  Tomorrow I return to the man I'm supposed to be instead of this restless bear wandering around my apartment.