The Eleventh Commandment

XI. Thou shalt grow up.

Hi, you. I'm stressing out. I know, I know - you're probably reading this from the computer at the job you've been doing every day for years, so this post is going to seem even more immature than it is - but I have avoided this step in my life valiantly for five years, and now, when I wake up tomorrow, I awake to a commitment of unknown quality, duration, flexibility, and enjoyability. My inner-child is suggesting that, maybe if I don't go to sleep, I can't wake up tomorrow, and I don't have the heart to tell him that it doesn't work that way. Tomorrow will come, and I will wake up and go.

So, as you can tell I've been driving Jessie nuts. You can tell because I just told you and also because that little preceding paragraph is the tip of the mental iceberg that has been slowing gravitating southward into my consciousness. I am losing the mental game regarding this amazing opportunity, choosing instead to see it in its entirety as a monumental engagement of time, precious time. Now, if I was free to do as I wished, would I use that time wisely? No sir. I haven't honestly worked in five months, and in that time did I write my children's books? Did I move HFTH into the next stage of development? Did I ever get around to cleaning the interior of my car? Of course not. I didn't get any of those things done, because I had all the time in the world to do them and therefore got nothing accomplished (yes, nothing is an exaggeration, but it's too close to the truth for comfort).

Part of me feels guilty for even having this conversation. Somewhere in this world a 25-year-old man is dying of thirst or starvation or poverty. He's dying at the barrel of a gun or the blast of a bomb or the tentacles of some rare cancer. He's working three jobs so that he can take care of his son. I am an absolutely blessed, white, middle-class American male about to get full benefits and a good salary. I'm looking at buying a car that is worth more than a family in Uganda will make in as many years. And yet I can't shake this terrible fear, this feeling that I am losing something. I know, I know, I'm crazy or lazy or, worse, a baby. But I can't help how I feel. It is quite scary.

Besides, I am someone who processes things out loud. I need to hear the words outside of my own head and read them off of something other than a mental page. And I already feel a bit better, writing this to you. I think I freak out because I don't just see tomorrow or this week: I see next summer and go, "How will I have enough vacation to go on a honeymoon with Jess? How will I get enough time to perform at ragtime festivals?" I find all the little moments of challenge and group them together, see them as one big lump that I feel I need to deal with right now, right away. It becomes a paralyzing clump of "cannot" and "unable" and "busy" and I start to feel asphyxiated.

I know, I know. Poor Martin can't take three weeks of vacation in June. Boo hoo.

Which, ultimately, is what I'm telling myself. Get over yourself, Martin. You know that feeling you've been having, the nagging one that has you down on yourself because you wake up at 11 AM and no one needs you around until 5 PM? How you've been feeling pathetic, a no-one for months, that you've accomplished nothing and have been reliant on others for financial support? Well, this is the answer. This is the opportunity you attracted to yourself when you said to the universe, "I need to find a fulfilling way to make a living." And now that it's here, you turn around and say, "No, this isn't what I asked for. It's too much." But it is here. This is what you need to become solid. Stable. This is the medicine.

So, I am looking for the spoonful of sugar, so to speak. I realized today that I have eight hours a day outside of work, which is time to get things created and edited and fashioned and completed. And that time is suddenly much more precious. And I have weekends, which will regain their significance and not just be formless extensions of the week.

And, my hope of hope is that, unlike, well, every other job I've had save Apple, that this job will be fulfilling and challenging and meaningful in a way that no other job has for me. I want great things expected of me. I want my work to count, want it to sing out and be heard and reach people and change them. I want someone who needs my gifts and talents and abilities. I want to financially support myself, want to buy nice things without credit cards, want to take trips on my own dime. I also want the time to produce and create, to write and direct, to craft and to practice.

So, we'll see, won't we? I wake up in eight hours to something new, something much bigger than I've faced before...

Martin