Perception

It's amazing how much your perception can change over the course of a day. I've begun to wonder if I perceive my life in any real way at all.

I woke up this morning, dogged by the same sadness that has been trailing me all week. I still feel, sometimes, so much at the mercy of my feelings and circumstances in terms of how it colours my perceptions of things.

For example, this past week was Daylights Savings Time. We went ahead by an hour, and as usual, the effect on my sleep was brutal.

It was that time of the month.

I'm contending with yet another new contract and trying to get used to everything.

I essentially felt overwhelmed, exhausted and miserable.

I felt mad at my circumstances. And then felt bad that I was mad.

I felt bad because I was in the feedback loop I lately find myself in, which is this: I have so many things that people want. Why am I unhappy?

I am healthy. I am mobile. I drive a nice car. I have a detached home in Toronto. I have a good paying job and the skills to get another if it doesn't work out. I can pay my bills, take care of myself and my pets. I have a kind and loving family. I have kind and loving friends.

And yet none of the above makes me feel any better.

I am unhappy. I feel like a failure. I really hate my life sometimes. Is it wrong to say that?

I have moments on my way to work, nanoseconds of space in my brain, where for just a moment, I am heading somewhere else: to do research for my next book, my play's rehearsal, to the studio to record, to paint, anything but what I am doing.

Where I am and where I want to be seem so far apart and it makes me so unhappy. And yet at the same time, it seems silly to try. In seven years I'll be 50 years old. FIFTY.  Jesus, where did all the time go?

Maybe I'm just tired and in need of a vacation. I just don't know any more. But I do know that getting out and about today really helped. I just focused on the present as much as possible. And as dumb as it sounds, Eckhart Tolle was on Super Soul Sunday today, and watching that really helped too, at least in terms of giving me perspective.

I feel like my thoughts are all over the place right now. Perhaps I can write on all this a bit better later on. But suffice it to say, just focusing on what I have right now, really did help me feel better. And ironically enough, I stumbled across this entry from a while back. Gilda Radner's quote was appropriate to say the least.

Still, I just don't know any more if I can find what it is that will ever fill the hole in my heart. For a long time, that was the Marine, but he's gone now.

Despite what I think will make me happy, from where I stand right now, it just doesn't seem possible in terms of making any of it happen.

Is it wrong to say that? So be it.