“But I am saying if you can do anything with your life right now, anything at all, I think you should do that. Because the world doesn’t need anymore lame vampire fiction, you know what I’m saying? You with me amigo?”
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs
I’m overcome with melancholy today, mired in the sadness of contemplation. It began with Steve Jobs, the co-founder and visionary leader at Apple, stepping down earlier this week saying his illness prevented him carrying out his day-to-day duties. Here is what I wrote about that:
The first computer I ever purchased myself was a Macintosh. It was the last Apple product I ever purchased. Still, technology has changed my life and Steve Jobs, for all my battles with the company throughout the years, was integral in the history of the modern computer industry.
I wandered through a paper gaming shop today, reflecting on how my life has changed for the better because of the technology around me today. I have been overwhelmed with a human sadness as I contemplated Steve Jobs and his fate. Without him, my life would “Look Different” today.
I did not ever agree with his vision of technology, but he is forever tied into my own person history. Today, I am filled with the human sadness that comes with the inevitable. It seemed a good time to wish the man well — even if only into the void of cyberspace, a place he helped usher into reality.
It’s strange to be affected by a public figure, and yet it’s happened two other times:
1.
I can’t sleep with the air conditioning on anymore.
I could when I was in the Austin. The searing, 105 degree temperatures, the running, the house fixing, and the yard work made it impossible to live without air conditioning.
I am back in Indiana now where the heat, while intense, pales after The Summer of Run and the Great House Rehabilitation Project of 2011.
I leave my windows open, and I turn off the air when I am alone. Which is most of the time.
2.
I spent the day discussing art, creativity, storytelling, and life with my students. I am immersed within narratives right now, drinking in their spirits. It was during one of those slow moments that I had a conversation, one muddied with the human-ness of emotions and the personal strands that tether us with the ties that bind.
Nothing in life is easy. Love least of all. As we talked, I was very aware of my heart. Then the world became very clear to me for just a fleeting second.
The heart is the most powerful, creative tool we have. It breaks, it mends, it heals, it longs, it burts, it swells…and it beats until there is nothing left. That is art.
I am not sure what tomorrow brings, or where love ends. I only know that the heart beats until there is nothing left, and it does so without a care or worry that some day it simply won’t.
This is life.
In the months after I quit drinking I worried that as I made my way back into the world that I’d become the lamb sent to slaughter. “I’m a wolf stripped of its claws,” I told the psychologsts I sought out to help me deal with the fear ravaging me inside. They assured me I would be okay. I did not believe them.
I sought the comfort of solitude to protect me from the coming massacre. I retreated from the world, hunkered down, and watched. I watched, relentlessly, exhaustingly.
Slowly, I found my perceptions of the world around me were broken. I’d lived my life to fight a war that didn’t exist. I can’t pinpoint the day it happened, but one day I awoke and the fear was gone, removed, and forgotten.
When I teach the Introduction to Magazine Writing class, I make my students read many pieces from the National Magazine Awards. I switch the readings each semester, but one I keep is “The Things That Carried Him,” by Chris Jones. It’s a heart-breaking piece about everyone who comes in contact with an Indiana soldier as he’s killed in action and returned home.
Tonight he tweeted The Writing Process, and I thought it profound enough to share with you:
Today was a good day.
It’s 3 a.m. and I just put down the paint brush for the night. I spent the last four hours caulking and painting the new trim in my home, and painting three doors.
I didn’t get started until just around 11 p.m. because I went to visit some friends, people who I hadn’t seen in a long time. I’ve known all of them for more than a decade, and four of them I met within weeks of moving to Austin back in 1995.
I almost didn’t visit them tonight, though. Frankly, I was nervous. I almost threw up on the drive to the gathering. I stopped twice on the six mile drive and considered going home. I had work to do on the house, I tried to tell myself.
Besides, I’ve missed so many events throughout the last decade that another no-show wouldn’t have been missed. I’d removed myself from this group long ago in the same way I’d removed myself from just about every other group I’d ever been a part.
These are things addicts do. You can only embarrass yourself so many times when it matters before you cut your losses. I always cut and ran before it hit rock bottom.
But the last few years, I’d been thinking about them and wondering how to make my way back. Or if I could.
I wanted to find out so I kept driving even though every part of my addict-self was telling me to just go home, where I could be by myself.
Alone. The place I retreat when the world is going wrong. And today it had gone wrong.
It never feels this way while you are making them, but when you are finished it always feels the same way.
Trust me on this.
Life. On Writing. Science + Tech. Teaching. Travel.
Those are the Categories on my site, the big buckets under which I live my life. They just evolved. I did not set about choosing them when I started writing on this blog a few years ago, they appeared out of the randomized pieces of words flowing through me.
Lest you think I lie, please take into account that I first launched this site May 16, 2009 with this post, almost a year to the day after I last had a drink. More than two year later, the biggest Tags on this site (not related to traveling) are about my addiction recovery.
This site, as my life, has simply emerged from my daily actions since May 11, 2008. Today, here is what it taught me:
***
I met this dude in 1996, the year I rolled into Austin. We worked together at Trudy’s. We also became best friends over a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey while discussing how we’d ended up in Austin.
The short story: the women we’d been with decided to not be with us. Good enough: we bonded as men.
Much has happened since then, but one of the constants in my life has been our friendship.
We lived together for two years then, when I moved away in 1998 to go to graduate school I’d stay with him when I’d return for SXSW Interactive, and when I moved back to Austin in 2002 I bought a house where he’s lived since. (I lived here for two years until the job pulled me away.) Continue reading
