Emotional night: reflecting on life.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know here I am again.

I’m sorry for anyone if this continues to be repetitive. Just check out now. I just want to write and have dialogue and responses. I’m just going through something right now in my life. Really feeling things hard. I’m practically crying here at home listening to music just getting wrapped up in it and where I am in life.

So again leave now if this at all bothers you. And its’ a bit rambly.

Thinking about having spent almost 35 years in life without realizing my dream of meeting someone I want to spend my life caring for is really powerfully emotional. I think about the journey from where I began to where I am now…so so much has happened. It’s so unbelievable. But tonight I feel like a kid for some reason. Like time is just passing slow for me to live in a dreamers headspace.

I preserved through so much in my 20’s (probably like alot of us). Parents with cancer, moving away, falling in love, broken heart, beginning the career, getting fit, getting unfit, getting fit again. Lost friendships, new friendships moving to new jobs. Getting older and realizing it. It’s overwhelming.

I wonder what it has all added up to? At 35 years?I’m just a regular human like everyone else, even when I try to improve myself. That being said I do have dreams still. I’m desperately hearing the call to get back on my music. I left it for four years. Your ex telling you how she played second to music right after breaking up with you…well that left a huge scar on my desire to do anything with music. I remember feeling like music was a curse…something that wrecked my whole life (tear). It’s no wonder I went to dance as my other music outlet. But she was wrong, I was just immature and made mistakes. I loved her and music…but I didn’t do my half correctly (nor did she do hers).

I’ve never created my own personal music. I want to. I’m scared to. I want to sing too…but it also scares me. I’m scared of just sucking hard. More scared than running a marathon or doing yoga training. Singing a song from my soul and heart is something I think I really need to do. I’m an emotional musical creature…I need to go towards this. And not be afraid to do something people had told me to do for years: pursue music more seriously. I never wanted to before…I just wanted to be left alone and to have fun like everyone else…I think I wanted to just be normal…but I know my music brain is anything but. I now I see the potential in myself to offer something this way. Not perfectly for sure.

I hope I’m not too late at 35. It seems my life just slowly ticks forward and I wonder how much I’ve really accomplished in the past 10 years? I wonder if anyone genuinely loves me for my deeds and intentions. Scary to think of. I know I’ve always tried my best. To be positive and to go after life and not hide away. I’m never the most talented, or fastest, or strongest, or wealthiest but I do stubbornly work hard to improve myself, and get better. I really really try hard…and it crushes me sometimes. But I won’t die in this life knowing i didn’t give 100%. I wonder if I will ever be loved or allow to love someone the same way I pursue life. I’ve been opening myself up again lately. Tough it is…I’m glad you are all here, and my friends.

See this is rambling…but it helps. Writing helps. I can’t wait for summer. I need my free time. Space. Space to be filled with all the natural positive energy possible. For music and getting back to myself again. I didn’t realize how much being a leader as a school teacher changed me and made me perhaps less relatable. I just want to be the kid with the guitar again for awhile and see what comes out.

Thank you for reading…I have no idea what anyone could say to any of this. I may just tear myself to sleep. Just feeling overwhelmed. Such a crazy brain I have sometimes.

Good night.

2

I don’t know your whole story. I do remember seeing you start a similar thread recently.

35 is nothing. You are obviously feeling down, but the idea that if you are not in a committed relationship now then you never will be is ridiculous on the face of it, especially if you have been in such a relationship in the past (by which I mean you have a demonstrated ability to attract a member of your preferred gender).

You have ambition and dreams and the strength to persevere…all appealing qualities.

Look at it this way, instead of being 35 and locked into a steady but passionless marriage supporting two kids who will be entering college in a few years and a mortgage that prevents you from taking any risks, you are 35 with a wealth of life experience and maturity and now in a position to be flexible about the various opportunities that are still open to you. Sounds like you are in the driver’s seat.

I am sure there are women who will find someone with a passion for music to be incredibly desirable. And if you fail to be professionally successful at a music career, you will still survive and be able to go back to teaching or do something else.

Doing something you enjoy (music) will make you a hundred times more appealing than someone who is just trudging through life.

3

Do you have a real-life friend or relative who can listen to you (I’m not saying not to post it here) - sometimes sharing this stuff in person can help to make it more bearable. Keep sharing it here too, if that helps, or you think it might.

If this was IRL, I would not be trying to offer advice. Trying to ‘fix’ a hurting person’s problems straight off is often tantamount to either downplaying them, or saying “shut up and listen to me”.

However, this is the internet, so here’s my 2c:

Sometimes it can help to subdivide your problems into categories:
Your problems are large or small.
Your problems are also either within your power to remedy, or not
That’s a 2x2 grid of combinations, but this site sucks at tables, so here are all 4 boxes as a list:

[ul]
[li]Big problems you can change: Focus your ‘doing’ effort here[/li][li]Big problems you can’t change: Focus your ‘coping’ effort here[/li][li]Small problems you can change: Put off until later (maybe until never). You’re busy and upset.[/li][li]Small problems you can’t change: Try to ignore them. They don’t matter. Don’t waste your time and feelings on them.[/li][/ul]

I know that’s really trite and obvious, but everyone has limited energy and emotional resources, so budget the process of expending them. 35 is not too late for anything.

4

Let’s see. 35. When I was 35, I was just about to remarry, a woman who would accompany me for two years abroad, then bear my last child.

The second 35 years found me, at 70, living alone in BFE snarling at people on forums. All of my past, both 35 year blocks, were safely tucked behind me, irrelevant, aside from being the fonts of lessons learned.

At 75 I got a new passport, and filled it up with stamps from 33 countries on all six continents… Alone. I believe I have reached a stage in my life at which I need a companion, as I do not wish to die alone. I have fallen insanely in love, online, and will go around the world (again) to meet her next month. I will take only a toothbrush, ready to start my life over.

At 35, it has only just begun, and your past, wasted or otherwise, will have little effect on what you turn out to be. At the end, your final thoughts, you will not regret anything you have done. Only what you did not do.

5

Fuckin’ A; that’s a terrific post jtur88. Excellent perspective, IMO.

Life’s a rollercoaster that you ride, Quasimodal, not a game that you win. Hang in there.

6

Thanks all. It’s all reminders for sure. I just feel like if I can sleep well at the end of day for having done my absolute best on a given day all is generally well. But I have this damn feeling oriented side. And sometimes it hits me so hard I can’t do anything but let it do it’s work. So I feel a ton better now. Life hasn’t been wasted. I’ve lived enough life for two people so far. Right now I’m so pumped that on the 2nd night with my Marathon training group, I’m in the top 15% of people. Who knew I’d ever be the guy who could be an athletic runner? Like I was the pudgy boy for so long. Now people are seriously respecting my athleticism. It’s sort of unbelievable to me. Like I have some new superpowers or something. All because I never gave up. 3 years of yoga, fitness lifestyle has really come together. And as always the nay-sayers were wrong.

I do mean what I said though about music. It’s gonna happen. I love it too much not to.

The woman will come I hope from me living a genuine life. I tried once the other way and it caused such a disruption. Never again. Have to keep reminding myself to stay on my path. It’s leading me to exciting places!

7

Also I know teaching will never be seen as a sexy job. But I love it. And I’ve gotten damn good at it. Especially in the last 2-3 years. This weekend a young boy in trouble with the law, and who is having all sorts of problems opened up to me. He fights everyone, but he opened up to me. Cause I’ve worked hard on him and not given up. Forget academic teaching and testing and all that stuff. I was able to reach a troubled child and have him realize he is valued. That moment meant alot to me. Makes me proud to be a teacher. And reminds me why I keep doing it, even when I could go and be a sexy musician. Helping a kid like that is far more meaningful and real for my spirit. No one will ever know unless they’ve done the work like me.

8

Academic teaching? That’s your job and can be handled by a computer. Educating? Reaching out and guiding a child? That’s your career, and the one you signed up for.

9

I sympathize a lot; In fact, much of what you wrote here could have been written by me. I’m a few years younger but otherwise in much the same boat. “Nobody can change their past, but anyone can change what their final ending will be” and “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” are clichés, but true.

10

Compassion is sexy.

I am utterly fucking serious. It is the first thing I noticed about my husband and the reason I’m still in love with him after all these years.

I do worry you are pinning your hopes for happiness on your idealized view of a relationship rather than the reality. My problems are not fewer, in a sense, they are even multiplied because we share everything. Over the last ten years, I’ve been tasked with building a life of meaning without a significant creature in my life - I want a child of my own, but have not been able to have one, so I can kind of relate. Now we are on the adoption waiting list and may become parents anytime between tomorrow and three years from now. That’s thirteen years of waiting for a kid. What do I do in the meantime? Try not to think about it. Live my life. Let it happen when it does. What else is there? We have to find meaning in where we are now. I’m celebrating my freedom while I have it.

As for creation, I’m a writer, and I can’t survive without it. I truly believe salvation lies in creation. Being an artist is brutal, thankless work full of doubt and insecurity, so get used to the fear. It’s not going to go away, not even after you compose your twentieth hit song. But you will keep going because the creative process itself is an addiction and a passion and the most satisfying work you’ll ever do.

ETA: If you want a kick in the pants, read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.