Idle Hands

"idle hands are the Devil's plaything"

During my final three years of High School, I promised myself that I would graduate with flying colors... that I wanted to be the top of my classes, and I wanted everyone to recognize me for being the most hardworking, dedicated, fierce, and tenacious student that my parents or anyone had ever seen. When I got into college, I failed miserably the world was a major shell shock for me and I either buckled due to the pressure or I simply couldn't deal with a world in which I knew nothing about... or I simply gave the fuck up. I vaguely remember opportunities coming up in which I felt out of my depth. I felt that I wasn't the best, but I didn't try to become the best either, I simply told myself that this wasn't what I was capable of doing. I even remember going to college and wanting to join a music band, but I didn't even want to try out... I believe I was just being a chicken shit at the time. But at 18, university was a very scary place for me, I didn't know anyone, and I didn't really give myself a lot of room to try new things. But I do remember spending a lot of time in the computer lab. My hands weren't spent finding opportunities for music, graduating, making money, or even partying... but I found myself in the computer lab trying to establish friendship with local or long-distance residents.

Fast Forward to 15 yrs, and I realize that whatever confidence propelled me to become the best in High School had long left me, the dedication for greatness has disappeared at an alarming rate to the point that even now I don't even have confidence as a man in the areas of music, technology, or psychology. Sometimes I think life just beat the shit out of me too much, that either I eventually got use to being beat up all the time or I simply adjusted to the fact that I wasn't as great and powerful as I told myself.

On Tuesday Night, I was sitting outside with my neighbor Peter who was asking how band practice went; I shrugged and said it was alright. I think I even told him that I didn't know what I was doing with the bass guitar, that it felt foreign to me. And to be honest, playing the bass guitar has felt extremely foreign to me lately. It's like... I got into this bad habit of spending more time listening to music, then practicing music. It's like sometimes, I sense I spent my 20's & early 30's living in an imagery world in which I didn't do the things I wanted to do, but I spent whatever time that I had watching and listening to the things that I wanted to do. Examples of this can be... watching porn instead of having sex, watching TV instead of acting, giving advice instead of being a psychologist, and listening to music instead of being a musician. Life can be so full of excess bullshit and crap, that often times we forget that we need to keep moving towards the things that will bring us happiness and life. I thought for so long that I was a fighter, but it took me awhile to shake the realization that I was far from a fighter, and that I wasn't fighting for anything at all. I had spent a lot of time just sitting around waiting, or looking, or listening, or just being down right lazy. I'd even go so far as to say that along the way my idle hands picked up distractions that took me away from the things that would bring me more concrete happiness and joy.

All this week, I've done a lot of thinking about my current situation... there is a lot of elements that I miss, and there are even elements in my current life that I need to dismiss, remove, and export from my world. The lack of imports into my world has caused greater chaos then anything else. It took me a full day to realize that the only way I'm going to get back to where I was 15 yrs ago, that I'll have to remove the excess things that have become a part of my life over the last 15 yrs, and replace them with the things that I was doing before I turned 18. Maybe I should be grateful, and I am grateful that I recognize this reality... but at same time, I can't shy away from the fact that even though I might feel as though I wasted 15 yrs of my life not moving forward. I have a deeper understanding of complacency, idle hands, and not pushing oneself towards greatness. I'd like to hold onto this blog, and remember it around this date next year, I hope that my confidence grows and that I become better and wiser between now and then.