Hello again. It has been four years since my last confession. Actually more.
Sorry, Sarah and I have been binging 'Evil' the past few weeks and the premise involves a priest, so I've been hearing a lot of confessions recently.
I've used this blog to exercise my metaphorical demons before--coincidentally--but that's not really why I'm here today.
My daughter, NOW A TEENAGER (WTF), and I were having a conversation last night and my having a blog came up (this one, as well as an older one that goes back to 2011...or maybe earlier) and surprisingly this was interesting to her. She somewhat encouraged me to write a new post. She made a comment that she didn't think her life was interesting enough to have anything to say. I told her that often my life isn't particularly interesting but I still find a lot to say (not that people are necessarily listening, but I still find it helpful to word vomit--at least every two to four years apparently). Maybe that's a personal quality but perhaps in the written form lives sound more interesting. There are a lot of stories that are popular that involve very ordinary people with very ordinary problems (mostly the whole of "literature" or "straight fiction") and so clearly there is some appeal in the ordinary. Not that I'm comparing this blog--mostly barren, barring about five or six posts over the last decade or so--to a best selling novel.
Do I find I have much to say today? Not really. Speaking of barren.
I have been thinking a lot about death, leaving a legacy, finally getting around to those things I've always wanted to do. Finish a novel for one. That's really the only undone dream left that haunts me.
I've accepted that that an album isn't going to happen. I do think with a little bit of effort I could at least self-publish an album of material, that I think would be worth sharing. But looking at pros and cons, it just doesn't seem worth it.
Also apparently I'm not going to become the greatest center fielder and number three hitter for the Seattle Mariners since Griffey. Feeling increasingly unlikely at 37.
But finishing a novel is realistic. Potentially getting it published is a whole other dream, one that involves a fair bit of luck. But finishing it would satisfy me greatly. So you'd think I would have made it happen by now. But motivation is a fickle thing and, at the end of the day, I find myself putting it off. I mean I've got a story I work on every week or so, but it'll take another two to fifty years at the snail's pace I'm going. I'm able to not care about such things a fair amount of the time. But at any old moment during the day the lack of finishing can strike and haunt me.
Does it matter? Should it be good enough that I have a career, two kids and a wife that I all think are pretty cool? In the end of things our planet will overheat to the point of eliminating all life on earth, and our planet will be consumed into a white dwarf star or something along those lines. I heard that this is the most likely scenario. At some point we'll all be forgotten, even those that are most memorable right now, so I suppose one could say it doesn't matter.
To me it really comes down to what you'd want people to say at your funeral. What kind of person do you want to be remembered as? What kind of legacy do I want to leave for my kids?
In my extended family most never went to college. Which is fine, there is a blue collar legacy for most of them. But that wasn't me, and it was hard believing that I could do it, because there was no blueprint. Having one parent who went to college increases the chances they will. Again, not saying that this is the most important thing--having a career you are happy with is most important. But if at least one of them are the kinds of humans who want a job that requires such training (I suspect one is...) I think that's helpful. So leaving a legacy that involves career success, as well as creative...that could be helpful for the children that--hopefully--outlive me. Ideally they don't outlive me any time particularly soon, but who knows. Knock on wood.
Is wanting a legacy simply vanity? Maybe. Maybe it's okay to be forgotten. Most of us will. Not immediately, but eventually. Most of the celebrities of the day 100 years ago no remembers at all. A select few, but even the most temporarily memorable are just that. Temporarily memorable.
Every life is a pile of good things and bad things, as Doctor Who reminds us. Not finishing those projects we wanted...never putting that debut album out, never writing that novel, whatever it is. We could qualify as a bad thing. But the good things are there, regardless. So if you only worry about doing these--as of yet-- undone things because you want to sleep at night, maybe that's okay. But also maybe that's a sign you're only trying to feel better by arbitrarily finishing something. Out of obligation rather than love.
I don't know.
But that's enough for the day. Raised too many questions without answers. Maybe this all sounds like its coming from a place of depression, but it's not. Just doing the "reoccuring outpouring of everything" as I once phrased it.
*The full Doctor Who quote, which sits to the right of my desk reads..."Every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad but, vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant."
I love this quote and its my guiding principle as a counselor. I try to add to the pile of good things. And help the bad things not make the good things seem unimportant.
Also...watch 'Evil', on Paramount Plus. It rules.
