Last night I found myself in bed thinking, quite feverishly, about death. Here’s a simple truth: I have no proof of what happens after we die. I have my beliefs, which have everything to do with energy and reincarnation but nothing about memory. I fully believe that when I pass, my memories will cease and the energy (spirit) that is me will inhabit another physical form. It could be a cockroach. It could be a human baby. The wheel of reincarnation spins on and on. Now, that wasn’t as terrible of a waking fantasy as I make it seem. While it is true I have a dark feeling that death lingers close, I am not at all scared or fearful of it. Instead I’m introspective about such things. I’m not wishing for it. I’m not waiting for it. Instead I’m considering all that I can do with my life while I have it.
This could be the opening volley of a midlife crisis, or it could be the chemicals and tissue that compose my body telling me that I’m not taking care of myself and need to fix this problem before something does indeed go horribly wrong. I’m leaning towards that explanation, because along with fever dreams have come some clear and honest revelations.
I’m aware that I gained 20 lbs over the past year. Stress goes right to my belly. However, it isn’t just about the stress. It is about the habits I’ve formed over the last 4 years or more. I’ve reached the point where I eat perhaps a meal a day. This is a sure formula to being fat. One of the revelations was my body telling me that the metabolism is slowing down to compensate for lack of eating. As a result I find myself eating one really big meal and storing it away to be released as energy over the course of the next day. Too bad I don’t do enough activity to release that energy that is being stored up as fat. So, as a result I just get fat. The revelation showed me the way to get back to a healthy weight. Another showed me about healthy lifestyle.
Writing is the core of my being. I’m a storyteller who has cut himself off from free flowing creativity. Dumb, I know, but worse is how I did it. I stopped allowing myself to write badly. I became enamored with the pursuit of flawless first drafts. I wanted everything that wasn’t under the guise of blog to be genius. I got too caught up in being liked to actually be good and grow. This, like the fat situation, is a fixable condition.
The key for me is to decide what I want out of this life I have left. I have to make the effort to follow my dreams and stop waiting for things to happen on their own. They don’t. Nothing in my life has merely happened, no matter how much I want to believe it has. I put myself in the path of asteroids. Now I need to remember how to mine them for diamond.