Crouched down with my hands on my face, I look at the many, many, many design schematics laid down on top of a creaky wooden table in the middle of a room surrounded by different dismantled part of machineries that range in style and aesthetic from 1800’s steampunk furnaces to modern Meet The Robinsons-esque bits and bobs to rune laden plants that look like it came straight out of a fantasy setting.
Welcome to The Workshop. It’s the name that I have decided to give to the current snapshot of the inside of my brain. It takes the shape of a room where I could sit down and imagine how I want my internal space to be able to do and what I want it to feel like. I have spent the last few years trying out new things, adding things to the garden, breaking into sacred places to see if they have any uses, laying concrete on top of lands that doesn’t work anymore.
What has happened of course is that now the garden produces barely anything, most sources of renewable power doesn’t run, the water supply is tainted, debris is scattered all around the place, resulting in an internal place that cannot produce anything externally nor internally. I’ve learned a lot of things from breaking things and trying things out, like in what ways I am different from others, how much the image of marriage that my parents gave me might not be the norm, how much community both matters and don’t matter to me, and I think more importantly how important I am to myself. There’s also things like finding out what I like from thinking and how cool habits are but those are things that I’m gonna continue exploring till I’m dead so it was a given I’m gonna find new things about them.
I was sitting on top of a pile of trash, hands on chin, looking around at the mess that I’ve made, and have spent a few weeks documenting internally what broke down, what still works, what have worked, and drafting what I want to have in the new place, what I’m going to reuse from the rubble pile, and what I’m going to throw away. There was a few big strokes that I want to implement.
- Making being productive easy again. One of the things that have been hit the most during the whole exploration phase was my ability to do things that is not directly within my line of focus. I have completely destroyed all of my space filling processes that deal with being productive and I think it is time to get them up and running again.
- Return to enjoying things on my own. Part of what I was trying to do was relax the internal structures that exist inside of me so that I could tap into the “greater society” and “the system”, but what I’ve been seeing is that actually what I had was great so I should just keep on doing that. This mostly means doing more board game meetups and playing D&D again, as well as allowing myself to use fiction in places where the real world fails to deliver.
- Be Robust, Alone. With the entirety of the romance machineries and concepts turned upside-down, I am ready to just face the world without any thoughts about long term commitment. Gonna spend at least a few years just going slut-mode and letting myself do things that are more casual in nature.
And I was basically ready to go forward! I was taking steps on building new space filling processes and setting up proper new power sources that are stable and robust within myself so that I can start doing things more clearly. It’s really slow. I tell you. It’s hard. I think I’ve accepted that but you know I do still need to remind myself that this will take time and it is okay for things to take it’s time.
But then I somehow managed to get a girlfriend. And this kinda fucked up my dynamics a little mostly because I’m entirely unsure where to put her within this equation. I like her a lot, but also, this is like, the one time in my entire life, where I’m the most unavailable for one. I curse the world for giving me what I wanted. If she had come before I would still be in my exploration phase which means she can slot in and we’ll figure things out along the way, and if she had come later I would have more concrete ideas about what I’m doing with my life and it would be a lot easier for us to see if she fits the dynamics. But that’s not what happened. This happened now. And now I look at all the plans I have in front of my face and rub my face in agony as I have to redo a lot of the plans with the possibility of her being in my life. It’s a good thing. I will underline this once again. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
I just have a lot more work to do. Which might be what I need to get my ass out of this hole I made for myself.
The Workshop is a mess. There are a lot of uncertain things, and life just gave me more uncertain things. It’s like a reminder that my plans are nothing to the whims of reality, and should plan accordingly. Life is uncertain, move forward one step at time. Be brave. You got this.
