I’m lying here sort of propped up in my bed… trying to figure out exactly what I want to write.
My mind is bouncing around from thought to thought.
I’ve been in bad shape for a good long time–emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually… in pretty much everything.
I want to break free and become who I always hoped I was.
But I think I’ve failed so many times, in so many different things, including some of the most important aspects of my life that… I’m afraid to try again.
When I try and fail and try and fail and try and fail again and again and again and again… I lose the emotional strength to keep trying.
Of the areas where I feel like I’m falling short, there’s clearly a part of me that says, well, if I wasn’t really trying, then I didn’t fully fail.
I think maybe it gives me an out, so to speak. Screwing up again in that area doesn’t carry as heavy of a painful emotional response because I wasn’t really putting a lot of effort into that particular struggle.
In my current emotional state, having an out might actually be a good thing because… well… I’m where I’m at, as you’ve all seen for quite a while.
I’m already overwhelmed and anxious and discouraged and barely hanging on, and failing again… It’s just devastation.
And I’m afraid to write about my efforts when I do try, because it seems pretty clear that I’m likely going to fail again, as that is what always happens.
And as I already know for certain, having had the comment from one of y’all, it is frustrating for you to watch me flounder and never pull out.
So I hesitate to write about efforts to try, knowing that I’m likely going to fail. And it’s already a significant expenditure of emotional and mental energy just to work up the courage to try again.
But I don’t want to be what I am right now.
It’s not who I really am.
I mean of course, it has to be, because no one can take away my ability to be myself, so these are genuine Stephen reactions, and it is genuine Stephen thinking; but the core of who I am… I look at the way I act and the things I do and my emotional and mental and spiritual state, and I see where I am, and it’s… foreign to me.
It’s me, but it’s not me.
Wow… funny. Just as I thought that, I was reminded that one of my hill sisters recently shared a similar saying with me from Shakespeare.
“Twas I, but tis not I.”
In my heart, I’m love.
I’m kind, patient, gentle, courageous, optimistic, determined.
But I’ve let fear and anger and resentment and pain cover and even suffocate portions of who I am.
Fear I think has been my most debilitating.
I don’t really know how to describe what the continual failure has caused, if it fits into any of those… I’m dictating off the cuff, stream of consciousness, as per usual.
I think what it has caused is continual disappointment, and over time I’ve let those continual failures convince me that most of my efforts will end in failure in the future.
I’ve lost confidence that my efforts will yield the positive results I seek.
And without confidence the effort is worth expending because I’ll almost certainly just fail anyway… it’s an ugly place to be. Trying will only lead to failure and pain. And not trying leads to a loss of self-respect and… different pain.
I don’t think it’s in me to give up–ever. But it’s clearly in me, and running me, to recoil and withdraw–wounded, angry, and afraid.
Yesterday I listened to a book that did everything to lift my soul that Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals did to drag it down.
Now that’s not fair, as I choose my own emotions, but I was left with… I think real sorrow after coming out the other side of listening to Rules for Radicals.
I’m grateful that I listened to it. In fact, I will likely listen to it again. But the takeaway message is the antithesis of everything that I stand for. The objective is to bring about change by sowing, nurturing, and hopefully reaping division, anger, blame, us vs them, oppressors vs oppressed. Its aim is to rally the troops against the enemy, purposefully and deliberately obfuscating the many similarities in order to create a mentality in the rallied troops that we’re all right, and they’re all wrong, even when you as the leader know that’s not the case.
Effective, yes. But… so destructive. It hurts my heart to think about approaching challenges that way, doing real harm to people and communities and relationships to get what you want.
It’s the antithesis of Lift the World. It’s goal is to divide and create enemies to accomplish the goal. What I strive for as I try to Lift the World is to bring together to accomplish the goal by bringing people together.
High Road Leadership, by John C. Maxwell filled my soul to listen to because that’s his view as well, and it’s just so… light and wonderful.
It’s what I stand for. It’s love and kindness and compassion and building relationships on common values. It’s building friendships with those who might otherwise be enemies. It’s… beautiful.
It’s a magnificent alternative perspective on leadership, in my opinion.
I’ll listen to that one again as well.
So… I’ve failed yet again in my efforts… movies, YouTube, and the porn that I always relapse with, triggered by the beautiful actresses I see…
I’m succeeding in others.
I’m going to try again, motivated by what I heard in Mr. Maxwell’s book which reminded me that I cannot do what I want to do if I continue to do what I’m doing right now.
I feel the trepidation… trying again…
It’s scary.
As I think about where I am right now, and I think about where I was 15 years ago… it’s shocking to me to see what I’ve become.
But I’m gonna try again.
And again.
And again.
For however long it takes.
I’m scared. I’m exhausted. Hope is… only a spark. And self-confidence is the lowest it’s been in my entire life.
But… I can now empathize with other people in ways I never had been able to until now.
And with my grand dreams for this life, one of the things that I wanted most was to be able to truly understand people, to know what it’s like to be somebody else, to feel what they feel.
I still can’t do that, but the broader my experience is, the better I can understand.
I’m grateful for John C. Maxwell and his book High Road Leadership, for bringing light and encouragement and just enough hope to be a catalyst for change.
As I write this, I do write it with a heavy weight, a pressure… a foreboding. I think that’s what it is.
I’m afraid to try and fail again.
I know the concept that as long as you keep trying, you’re not failing, but when I try and try and try and try and never reach the destination I hoped to reach, I am not yet the man who can look at having never given up as being enough.
But I hope someday maybe I can get there. I would want the people I love to be able to be there, to be able to let go of the outcomes and look to their efforts for their measure of success.
Of course, that’s not everything. I think for me it’s not so much about success as a generality, but just wanting my hopes to be realized.
So maybe that’s a different concept altogether. The devastation that I feel isn’t so much because I’m failing. It’s that in the one area that mattered most to me, I gave everything that I had, and I keep trying and trying and trying, but my deepest desire for life remains unrealized.
And even now, that spark of hope and determination that I felt yesterday, has vanished away. I don’t feel the drive and desire. I feel exhaustion and discouragement and hopelessness, fearing that my efforts will never yield the fruits that I so deeply desire.
So though it was an emotion and a mental shift yesterday, today it’s simply a logical decision.
But here we go.
Onward. Again.
As for yesterday, and the happenings of the day, I called all the junkyards in Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri, and none of them had the computer for ET.
I don’t want to spend $700 on a computer for it.
I gave up trying to find a computer for it, having looked at junkyards and looked on Facebook Marketplace. I could order one from a junkyard in another state, but it wouldn’t come with any kind of reasonable warranty, not to mention they would be in another state, and there’d be no guarantee that the computer would even work. Computer issues with these Vans was a common issue, I think.
I spent a good while up in the upper field loading Greenhouse materials onto my trailer and unloading them down by the greenhouse down here. I’m not done, but I made some pretty significant progress.
Cross the fingers, I’m hoping to get done with it today.
I spent some time relaxing by the creek, and by relaxing, I mean working on everything down there. Cutting up wood And burning it in my burn barrel, As well as carving deeper channels in the ground for the three places the spring is bubbling out of the ground, In an effort to make it so they don’t saturate all of the surrounding ground as much as they currently are.
I showed Jim everything that I had been doing, and I think he was a little bit excited to see everything that I had done and the possibilities of what could be in the future. We talked about putting a ram pump To run off the spring that I’ve been working with, and then using, later on, a diversion pipe to run the water from the other spring into this one.
My mom came over later in the evening, and we chatted about our upcoming trip. It’s not 100% set in stone that we’re going. She for sure is going to go to the little Michaelmas get together that my sister is putting on in September out in Washington state.
I want to reprise the trip from last year, and I don’t at the same time. Last year, it was murder on my back, and my back is already awful before we’re even leaving.
I’m also concerned about all the stuff that’s still left to do here on the hill. My equipment that I still want to sell, and stuff that still needs to be sorted and gotten rid of.
We’ve been trying to figure out what vehicle to take, whether ET or Rover, and we settled on ET last night, but when I went to bed, I realized Rover, though definitely fairly significantly smaller on the inside, giving up about 3 inches lengthwise and 4 and 1/2 to 7 inches widthwise, I also realized that I think the space inside is sufficient for a comfortable trip, quite possibly more comfortable than ET.
It’s just the gas mileage and the fact that it has nearly 250,000 mi on it already. 🙃
Anyway, that’s one of the decisions that needs to be made. I’ve got to figure out how to get this trip going. The computer issue, or better said, the fact that I don’t want to pay $700 for a computer for an old van that I only paid $700 to buy in the first place, is throwing a significant wrench in the forward plans for this trip.
Gratitude.
Mr Maxwell in his book reminded me of how important gratitude is for escaping the darkness that I’m in.
So, here we go again. 🙃
- Though it has come at the cost of my relationship with God, I’m grateful that all of the pain and suffering and challenges that I’m going through are giving me the ability to empathize with others who’ve gone through similar things.
- I’m grateful to have been able to make some good headway on getting the stuff out of the upper field. That’s a big deal, one of the big projects on my list that I’ve been trying to get taken care of. I’ve been feeling crappy about having everything left up there in the middle of the field.
- I’m grateful for John C Maxwell and his book. I think I own one other of his books that I haven’t listened to yet, or maybe I have? I don’t know. Either way, I’m grateful for him and his book and the principles that he taught that I was able to listen to and at least were sufficient enough to help me make the cognitive choice yet again to try, try, try again.
- I’m grateful to have the wonderful mother I have whose patient with me, even when I’m impatient with her, who’s flexible and kind and generous. Part of the reason I want to go on this trip, in fact, probably most of the reason I want to go on this trip is to be able to spend time with her making beautiful memories. She’s getting old, and I don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to do things like this.
- I’m grateful to have this little spring bubbling out of the side of the hill here That runs into the creek in a little waterfall that I have made for it to Cascade down. It was already running over in a little waterfall, but it’s just a little more direct now, so sitting on the bedrock Bank of the creek, you have the wonderful white noise of water falling into more water.
- I’m grateful for the health that I do have. My neighbor’s wife is in the hospital, I believe now with a feeding tube. She spent most of the last 2 months in the hospital, I think. My physical issues are mostly pain And uncomfortable sensations, but I’m still able to get up and walk around and do things, at least for now. And I’m grateful for that.
- I’m grateful for the reminder, again from Mr Maxwell, about negative self-talk. I’ve become a pretty proficient negative self-talker in a very short time. In fact, just as I was writing that previous bullet point, the negative self-talk jumped in to say and look how much of piece of crap you are that you whine and complain and you can still get up and walk around and do things, and there are so many people who can’t. People with missing limbs. People with debilitating pain that’s so bad that they can’t leave their beds. Positive self-talk. That’s another thing needed in my life right now.
Well, it’s almost noon on the 28th. I guess today will have two entries.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 