What the World Looks Like In the Morning

This is something big. This sky is breaking. These clouds are lifting with the sun.

And the world seems to know that this is what happens, but it's new to me.

And so I go along with what is happening, barely understanding and barely wanting to understand, instead just wanting to experience what is happening.

Have you ever woken up in the morning to see this sight?

We used to, every first day of the beach trip, go down to the ocean to see the sunrise. It doesn't happen all at once, like watching the sunset over the bay, you can see when the sun goes down once and for all and that last slice of the neon blood red sun disappears for the day, not to be seen again until morning.

But in the morning, everything happens gradually. It takes time and you can't really pinpoint the precise moment that the sun has risen. Maybe it happens the same way as the sunset when looking at the horizon, but I've never seen it that way. The sky gradually fills with light, and after a period of time, you realize that it is daylight again. 

Have you ever seen the sun without seeing a shadow too?

Turn away from the shadows, and look at the sun, if you can find it in all the light of the morning.

From the Journal: 0001

When I write [longhand] in this book, I fear that it is going nowhere, that what I write, what I create, what I think will be lost among the pages and not ever really make a difference in anyone's life.

The reason I came to writing and creating in general, was and is to make a difference. The songs I sing serve a purpose. The writing I write serves a purpose. It is all there, all made for the reason of helping and enhancing others' lives. So when I face the real fear and the possible fact that what I write will have little or no impact on anyone, I become disheartened. And then I don't create anymore. When in reality, I should be redoubling my efforts, and trying yet again to bring light into the darkness and shine my way to freedom of expression and truth. 

This is all to say that I think that creating is important in general, and specifically and especially important to me, personally.

---

And so I sat and decided to make a post out of it. Because sharing what I think is important, and what I create, is important to me. And so I will do it.

And so I have done it.

Waterfall

"And then when we get down there,

Way down to the very bottom of everything

And then we'll see it

Oh we'll see, oh we'll see it, we'll see it-

Oh my morning's coming back

The whole world's waking up

All the city buses swimming past

I'm happy just because

I've found out I am really no one"

- Bright Eyes

A Few Words of Encouragement (Or Lies I Should Have Convinced Myself Were True When I Started)

Save for future reference.

There is no one in the world like you. No one can make what you make. Though you may struggle and want to give up, you shouldn't. The only way past a hurdle is over it. Get up and jump.

You make your own way. The world does its own thing. Don't worry about it. What I mean is, don't pay any attention to what the world does. It doesn't concern you. You concern you. What you do all the time is what is important.

You are capable of anything, except what you won't try, or what you give up on. Try everything. Don't give up. Forge ahead as far as you can, then go a little further. You will be amazed at your ability to sustain and strengthen your resolve.

When its getting dark, light a torch. If you don't have a torch, light a candle. If you don't have a candle light a match. The light will guide you, but you have to shine the light. You have to be the one reaching out your arm with the light at the end of your fingertips, searching in the darkness for the path.

The road will rise up to meet you. You are on your own journey. You can't make a wrong turn. Just as it is impossible to get lost anymore, it is impossible to get lost anymore.

You already know the way to go. You already know where you want to be heading. Head in that direction. Become the person that you want to be.

There are no better ways to do what you are doing, because no one else is doing what you are doing. Don't search for a better way, just keep doing what you are doing. Just keeping making stuff and putting it out there.

There are no wrong answers, because there are no questions.

The only question that you have to ask yourself is... nothing. Don't ask questions of yourself, provide statements of fact. Get lost in the obvious.

Your audience is too big. Don't write for everyone. Write for one person. Write for one person, all the time. You can change the person you write for at any given time, but don't try to write for more than one person at a time. The audience is only ever one person at a time anyway.

There is no great time to blow up on the scene and infiltrate the world. There is only now. There will only ever be now. Allow now to be,  and be yourself now.

This is too cryptic, too vague. What I mean to say is, be yourself. You try so hard to be the person you think you should be, the person you think other people will like and react to. Just be yourself. Hang the rest out to dry.

What does it mean to be true to yourself? I feel like I want to say that, that you should be true to yourself, "to thine own self be true", but I think what I really want to say is.... Be yourself. Be who you are, foibles and problems and nonsense and all. Just let yourself be.

And when you let yourself be, share yourself. Others want to see people who are themselves, because that is who we all want to be. We don't want to be another person, we want to be most truly and fully ourselves. We want to be free to be ourselves all the time.

Keep creating. You may never ever get it right, but you need to keep doing it. What is right anyway? The rightest thing you can ever do at any time is to make something that is reflective of where you are in life.

Follow your dreams.

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
Henry David Thoreau

More than follow your dreams, live your dreams. Don't be like, "I can't live my dreams." Yes you fucking can. Just do it. Make your greatest dreams come true every minute of every day.

What do you want from life? Create it.

You can make anything. So make it already.

The best thing you can do is do.

You will give up before you even start. Know this about yourself, and then refuse to give up. Learn from your mistakes. Your mistakes are not the end. Learn from them and grow.

You are a beautiful person. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Stop comparing yourself to others. Others don't matter. You do. You matter.

And because you matter, what you make matters, so keep making it, through the hard times and the good.

Don't create for others, create for yourself. You are why you got into this business in the first place. Make yourself happy, not others. Lead by following your own example.


Stop thinking about everyone else.

Stop thinking about everyone else.

You are creating because you can connect yourself to another person through writing, but you can't connect yourself to everyone at the same time. There is no mind meld when it comes to reading and writing. Everyone is affected uniquely as they experience writing and what is written. Leave your baggage out of it.

If you derail, don't worry.

You'll get back on track.

Keep making somethings. Keep trying. Stay with it. Stick to it. Make it happen. If you don't, no one else will.

You don't have time to stop making things. You don't have time to second guess yourself.

If I told you twenty years ago you would be where you are now, you wouldn't believe me, that's why you don't know where you'll be twenty years from now, because you wouldn't believe it anyway.

It's okay to not know the answer.

Make something of your life. No one else will.

Might as well live the dreams you have already.

No matter your best intentions, things don't turn out like you expect. That's not positive or negative, it's just a fact, Jack. So roll with it. Expect the unexpected: you'll be surprised anyway.

If you give yourself enough time, you'll talk yourself out of everything. Don't talk yourself out of this.

Save yourself a little time at the end to polish. Not a lot of time, like 2% of the making time is all you need. It won't be perfect, but that's what makes it perfect.

And this is the most important lesson of the day: stay grateful. You can't be anything without thanksgiving. Thanks to those who came before you, thanks to those who inspire you, thanks to those who formed your dreams, thanks to those whose dreams rest upon you, thanks to those who love you the most, but mostly, and most sincerely, thanks to the source of it all.

Thank you.

Push Ahead

Surge ahead. Push forward. Make something happen.

To do that I am going to write. And I am going to write something that may not go anywhere or have much meaning, but what I am going to do is push ahead to make something happen.

I have to push and push because something doesn't just happen out of nowhere, it means that I have to forge ahead and push on and on and on. I don't think that I can do it very well, but maybe I can. I can.

And so I will push and push. There is something to be said for pushing ahead. Something to be said for forging ahead when there seems to be no path in the way or the direction which I am heading. I see my goal, and so I push forward toward it.

I push. I move forward. I push and move forward. I take the time it takes to actually do something, this writing for instance. I am taking the time, but I am really taking it by the horns and making something happen.

Just by writing I am making something wonderful happen. It doesn't seem to be wonderful, but only time will tell for sure what is wonderful and what isn't. So I need to just forge ahead again and make myself a model of what I want to be.

What I want to be is a writer, a blogger, a contributor, a content creator. I can only do that by actually writing, blogging, contributing, creating content. That is what it takes to do what I want to do.

All this nonsense writing only gets me somewhere, and it takes time away from the positive writing that I could be doing, but that really isn't true, because what I am doing right now is positive writing. I can only get to the positive writing by getting rid of the nonsense. I have found that I can't really avoid the nonsense. I can't edit it out before hand or I will get nowhere. If I try to self-censor as I am going, I get nowhere, so it is better to just lay it all out there on the page and worry about editing out the shit parts later.

Tell the story.

I don't think I have a story to tell. But that is nonsense, I have a hell of a story to tell, I just need to tell it.

I have a spreadsheet started of ideas for writing an actual book, an actual novel, and how I could actually attempt to tackle that monumental task.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Just make it happen, go forward one bite at a time and make something happen little by little. There is so much to do, that sometimes I can't see the steps in front of me because I am looking up toward the top of Mt. Everest, instead of just focusing on the few feet of ground I have to cover in the next moment.

I just need to keep my head down and plug away. That is sort of what this writing is for. It is for writing practice, it is for starting something and ending something daily, and realizing that it can all add up to more than what I had imagined at the beginning.

Sometimes my perfectionism kills me though. I fear that what happens in reality will never be as good as what I have worked out in my mind, and so I don't try to make reality match my imagination. I don't try to forge ahead and make my own path and make something actually happen in reality, instead I stay in my brain, in my thoughts, and let things happen that way, which is to say that nothing happens.

Again, forge ahead, push ahead, make something happen. Push and push and make something out of nothing. There is always nothing, but there is not always something. So move ahead and make something of myself, make something of my surroundings. There is so much to be gained by living and working and making something happen. I only have to do it. And so I am writing furiously toward that end right now. I am writing as fast as my fingers can move in order to write something that has meaning and ability and shines some light on the human predicament.

What all that means I don't necessarily know. What I mean to say is, that I start to write, and by continuing to write and continuing to forge ahead, I am getting there. I am getting where? Where I want to go, where I need to get to.