The Mind is Always a Step Ahead.

There is an Icelandic word called "Lifspeki",
which means ‘The practical philosophy by which one lives one’s life’.

Not a philosophy one believes; nor a philosophy one aspires to live by.

Not a state of mind. A state of being.

I wrote about the feeling of being split in half in this regard, and it made me think of the concept of daemons in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials book series, the first book set that Beardy gifted me. In the world of the protagonist Lyra, one's inner self is animated and projected through a daemon - a being that takes an animal form. In our world, it is assumed that our daemons are already inside us. But it does not necessarily mean, I guess, that we are more united within than a person from Lyra's world - because they are made aware of the disconnect and have more opportunities to work it out, while we are estranged to the fact that parts of us may contradict each other.

I think harmony between my philosophies/thoughts and actions is the highest thing I can ever aspire to in life.

My thoughts and actions are friends.

They do not seem to be one and the same.

My thoughts run around, and have the ability of flight. They can be free, unbounded, and can be in more than one place at a time.

My actions are creatures of the earth. Bound by the ground I step on. Always lagging at least a little bit behind.

They are the best of friends. At least they try to be.

But they often leave each other behind.

They can move in different speeds, not always forward, and they tend to get each other lost.

My thoughts tend do throw themselves up as if the stars are calling them by name when my actions can barely lift feet off the mud.

And so sometimes it feels like they part.

My mind can live in a completely separate plane from my actions, feeling free and wild like fire,

But the whole of me lives on Earth, where only My Actions matter.

And so the whole of me stays troubled.

A human without their daemon.

My Actions, not My Thoughts, allow me to connect with others, and to change reality.

My thoughts to my actions are what souls supposedly are to bodies.

Without a body, a soul is just a ghost. Unable to speak, to hold, to connect. Its existence questionable.

And without a soul, supposedly, a body is lifeless.

When my actions don't match my thoughts, what becomes of me then?

A thoughtful ghost.

A lifeless drone.

One piece at first glance, but two incomplete halves in any other angle.

My mind will always be a step ahead. 

But it needs to let My Actions catch up, hold its hand, so it can 

at the very least

follow closely by.

When Inspiration Gets... Scary.

A lot of the time when I get artist's blocks, I would offhandedly claim that I lack inspiration. "I need to get inspired!" I would think to myself, often writing "Get inspired!" on my daily checklists as a reminder to not wait for it to come and go looking for it instead.

But lately I've been noticing something happen a lot.. Something very curious and unexpected. I find myself being very inspired very often... And it doesn't make me feel better.

Instead it makes me feel scared, overwhelmed, and instead of adding clarity to the mess of bobbing ideas in my dirty bathtub of a mind it feels as if it just adds more noisy rubber duckies in the mix, squeaking, squawking, demanding my attention.

Listing ideas usually help, even if only to calm the anxiety symptoms these moments cause. Enabling me to try and lure the rubber duckies to form a straight line so I can deal with them one by one. (Sorry, I'm a little stuck in my rubber duckie metaphor.)

So I've had a change in priorities. Now I'm more about learning how to compile ideas that come up and being able to organize them in such a way that I can understand in the future. But the most important part that I'm dealing with is the one in which I have the most trouble with - following through. 

I'm trying to train my mind into finding it natural to actually work on things which feels sooo different from the imagining part. Coming up with ideas is something I'm alright at, it feels easy and natural, I can plan extensively in my head, come up with ways to do things... But once I need to execute, I'm like, wat is dis.

i actually just made this in memegenerator high five

Inspiration is useless if no work is created. It's merely a first step. Still, it's a thing that I lacked that I'm glad to have found. It's a step up. A box checked off. And that's what I want all of this to be about - not being perfect, just being better all the time.

What eases me to think about is the thought that I'm not failing anyone else as much as I'm failing myself.

Just kidding, that doesn't really comfort me much.

But it shifts my feelings of having to appear alright to wanting to just be alright. To allow myself to be in the thick of the struggle, to get my hands dirty, get embarassed, fail, be rejected, and hopefully after everything, learn things I can use as I go along.

So yeah. That's where I am right now.

Knowing my faults is key.