Spoiled Rotten

Well, it seems that I will no longer be able to put this off. Despite my best efforts to avoid indulging in utter self-absorption, it has become apparent to me that I can no longer contain this litany of contemplative by-products within my own head. The utter freedom of living in Southern California as a hedonistic, single, thirty-something, athletic, academic yogini is incessant. Running the risk of coming across as effete and bourgeoisie, I simply need to say that the world makes for one friggin' heavy oyster.

"Incessant freedom" is not my complaint, but rather my acknowledgment that for us privileged folk who need not struggle for survival on a daily basis, the burdens of fighting for satiety, safety, and human rights are replaced by the burdens of vacillation, perfectionism, and regret. Put simply, even after our daily obligations are met, we have enough time on our hands to establish and nurture auto-destructive tendencies. The result has been the proliferation of depression and anxiety throughout all industrialized societies. Apparently I am not the only one who has been willing to grab hold of that bloated worldly oyster even if it breaks me.

So here's to waking up and salvaging what's left of the idealism, hope, empathy, inspiration, and unconditional love that defined my life as a girl. I'm embarking on a mental health rescue mission, where the goal is to dig my spirit out from under the detritus accrued in the course of my relentless pursuit of accomplishment.

For whatever reason, it has become astoundingly apparent that I am chin-deep in a giant terrestrial petri dish, undergoing some kind of remarkable in situ metamorphosis. While I suspect that the groundwork for this mental, physical, philosophical, moral, and spiritual transmutation has been laid down perpetually over the past two or three decades, it seems that some kind of critical mass permitting a profound awareness of the process has been reached. In order to connect fully with this distillation - not simply to indulge in it gratuitously, but to extract as many of the creative and practical precipitates of it as possible for use in the service of my own well-being and in the service of others - I'm going to engage habitually with an accessible means of deliberate action. I'm going to start a blog.

I'd like to harness some of this creative drive, train it, discipline it, channel it into some coherent manifestation that may or may not take a useful or worthwhile form some day. I will try to capture the essence and energy of this incredible waking experience by taking note of thoughts and ideas that, while I am certain will vary in both their lucidity and value, may contain the occasional tiny, featherlight, totally portable, pocket-sized, pearl.