What is going on?

What is going on? It’s a question I should ask more of myself than I do. As it stands, it comes up only occasionally, fleetingly. Things have changed over the last year, not for the better. What things? The intangibles inside, the things that were “fixed” before, or so I thought. 2015 was an odd year, a year of conflicting extremes. Somehow, someway, through the course of it, I switched off. Looking back, I feel like this was a response to losing 3 people that I cared for to cancer, instead of grieving appropriately, I just switched off. I wonder if in a way I felt that my grief was undeserved, it sounds like something my subconscious would do, it was just a colleague, an old friend from England, a family friend, not someone really close like family, so why would I need to feel grief? That is unfortunately all too often how my mind works, yet I don’t realize it is working that way until much later.

My current state of not really feeling is similar to the way I used to be, before I got help, before I made progress & got healthy, before Jesus completely transformed me. It is completely different yet in a way it is just the same. I find myself today living life on auto pilot again, not thinking or feeling so much as I did only a year ago. Not caring like I did, only a year ago. Most troublingly, the desire, the drive, to be better, to create, to be all that I can be, it’s gone. Ok, maybe it’s not gone, but it is certainly not driving my life like it did for a few years. Most troubling I think, is that I feel so distant from God these days, so far away from my Jesus, yet I don’t do anything about it, I’m like a ship drifting on an ocean with no sail, no engine. Or at least I’m not hoisting the sail, not turning on the engine, it makes no sense, yet thats where I am.

There are 2 questions I need to asks myself with regards to this, firstly, am I ok with this & secondly, what is going on and what am I going to do about it?

the first question on paper is easy to answer, no I’m not ok with this. Yet, I kind of am, I live a comfortable life that is generally enjoyable. I get to be part of a family that is pretty great. I do a job that I am good at, I watch and play my sprouts, play my games, just you know, live life. To any “normal” person tat should be enough right? The thing is, I had a taste of something more, I want that more, I have always wanted that more. Yet the life of “more” requires effort, commitment and most unfortunately discipline, most likely sacrificial discipline – yuck.

If you want to get in good physical condition you have to eat well and exercise regularly, there is simply no other way to get there. That means you have to give up some time on your couch, not eat that burger, drink a few less beers a week, sacrifice the things that you want in the moment, to achieve the “greater” thing that you want. If you really want it, then you will do it, if you don’t you will eat burgers, drink beer & buy bigger pants. The beginning is always the most difficult, skipping that first weekend of eating out, not having that end of the week reward beer. Going to the gym when you’re tired, getting up early to go for that run. That whole thing sucks at the beginning but if you commit to it, after a while it is not so sacrificial, after maybe a month, you’ve made progress, you feel way better than you did & it all starts to make sense.

This is relevant to the current situation because not only have I switched off mentally, I gained 15 pounds in a couple of months at the end of last year, I am “trying” to lose it & get back in shape, yet somehow eating well 3 days a week and working out once a week has not yet magically turned me into the athlete I was a year ago.

Why write this? Why share this? I don’t know, this once helped, this once worked. Maybe I need to find something new, but for now this is what i have. Maybe if I can just sit down and write, not a I should write moment, but let whatever is in there come out, heck with the consequences, then maybe I can find some answers. Maybe those answers will help get me back on track. Maybe acknowledging that I have a hard time praying right now, or opening the bible, maybe I can find something through that, that maybe, just maybe, can help me get that back. You see, I really do want that, at the core of who I really am, I want to be close to God, I want to be a good husband, I want to be a good man. I want to be creating things, even if its just for me, but hopefully so that someone else can relate and feel maybe not so alone in this awfully depressing planet that the world of 2016 appears to be. I don’t know what I am say or where I am going. Hopefully this is the beginning, or at least something, because I need to feel alive again.