Obviously I'd given up on this blog for a while, years in fact. Over that time I started a more public and "mainstream" blog about my fishing and Taekwando and such. The thing is I'd kind of felt like I lost my mojo. I have a couple decent posts over there, but the energy feels restrained and there's little creative mojo. I've been feeling like my expression has been neutered, there's no passion or creative flow, like my sacral chakara is blocked or something, and that... blah... is coming out on that blog.
Also hardly any viewers over on that blog. I'll get around to linking it here. I'm not trying to hide my identity in this blog, but I like the freedom of being able to speak my mind without it being directly linked to me. People who care can find me and reach out, but it gives me and my family some space while giving me a little more freedom. The other one is stuff I wouldn't mind posting on Facebook, I keep it very non-confrontational (for me, so it's still got a little edge to it).
Meanwhile, this blog has been dormant for a very long time. Yet it has regular visitors. A lot, apparently. Pretty amazing, considering I gave this one up for dead. I wasn't even sure I could still log in.
So I started reading some of the old posts and I found myself really enjoying them. They were old posts and I could forget it was me wrote them and it was an enjoyable read. Lots of energy, good flow, great insight. I sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but I'm a pretty harsh critic of myself.
But here's an example:
"It is far better to know that you don't know what you want than to think you do. The man who knows and accepts that he does not know his path is far closer to his goal than the man who actively dedicates himself to an illusory path so he can say "I have a purpose."
"The first step to personal growth is not to "find your purpose," it's to realize you have no idea what your purpose is and to find peace in this."
"Certainly a guiding puspose is essential to a fulfilled life, but pretty much everyone is so clouded in their thinking (msyelf included) that a man has no chance of finding that purpose in his disoriented condition."
"So a man who knows hs has no idea what his path is can easily learn to find peace, while a man who stubbornly insists on following his purose first will circle the globe several times and never come close to his path (and likely delude himself into thinking his aimless circling is a pathway, when he's just wasting his time)."
That's PART of one post. But that is GOLD. And looking back at it I can see the Zen influence. It's like, wow, I actually integrated some pretty profound shit. And in the time passing since then, I've seen that mindless circling in "men with a purpose" and felt that inner turmoil.
And, DUDE, I called "BULLSHIT" on the COVID "pandemic" on March 11, 2020, BEFORE the lockdowns. And I called it out on Trump AND Biden, and there's the receipt. Granted, most of my ire was directed at the spiritual people who I expected to be a vanguard against tyranny and instead became foot soldiers and comfort girls for the fascists. But DAMN. The thing is I wasn't "ahead of my time," I was just being me, holding center while the whole world went bat shit crazy.
So what have I been up to since I posted last? I could say "nothing," and that could be accurate. I've done a lot of nothing. And in the midst of doing nothing and going through the inner conflict and turmoil of learning to accept the nothing - the Void - I "did" the following:
- Creating a fishing practice that began with surf fishing in Southern California and expanded into surf fishing, offshore and kayak fishing in Clifornia and Florida, complete with a storage shed full of my equipment all the way across the country.
- Bringing me to another thing I did - I bought a house in Pensacola. And more importantly, I spiritually divorced myself from Califorina (not easy since I was born here and am not a nomad by nature).
- I got a Black Belt in Taekwando, then Dan 2, then Dan 3. I went from dabbling in Taekwando to being very active and failry proficient, and it's become a big part of my life.
- One of my kids got married and has a baby. I'm a grandfather!
- My other kid is in high school.
And it's been a lot of nothing. A lot of working through the ennui, stress and depression of training myself away from the need to "do something." Some of this was circumstantial - my wife works a lot and now she's working and going to school, so I'm alone quite a bit. And instead of just "filling" the void, I want to also embrace it. Consciously go deep into it. And it's harder than it looks, a lot harder. Especially when I speak it outloud like this.
"I'm bored and lonely" is the gateway to the void. It's the pathway to embracing the nothing.
I REALLY need to post here more! This isn't a bad little blog at all.
