Screaming out loud

Why do we sabotage ourselves? Why is there that unrelenting urge to pop the balloon if it flies too high? I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few months. You see, for me, this blog is therapeutic. Writing is therapeutic. I don’t know how many people read this blog, not many. Fewer still are coming here because they actually know me and want to read what I have to say. So, really, the only person I’m writing for is me. And I know it’s good for me, I know it does so much to help me cope and deal with the things in my life that I bottle up because that’s who I am. So when I want to sabotage my own therapy, I keep myself from writing. I tell myself that I’m too busy, or it’s too late, or any of a dozen excuses to keep myself from doing what I need to do.

I’ve needed to be here for a while now. So much stress it is eating me alive. I’ve got 14 weeks left of unemployment. I’ve now gone 0-9 on job interviews, the latest one coming this past week. I hate sitting down at a table, knowing I’m the smartest person on either side of the table, knowing that in six months I could be doing their jobs better than they do them, and yet not getting the job. It throws me into a funk like nothing else, and I had a shitty weekend because of it.

I’m really glad that I’ve got some positives in my life. Poker has been going extremely well this whole year. I’ve cashed in over half of the tournaments I’ve played in, and haven’t finished worse than 4th at an AIPCO event yet this year. My personal life is solid, Sara is wonderful and treats me better than I deserve. I am surrounded by great friends. The cheesecakes have been selling well, and I even landed a catering gig last month.

But I realize also just how much I need to have a real job. It’s simply gotten to the point that I don’t think I will be able to relax until I have one. And until I can relax, I won’t be able to find any lasting happiness. I have these fleeting moments, where I lose the stress for an hour, a day, maybe even a week. But in the end, I find myself listless and drifting. Depressed about the state of my life, my career, my ability to define who I will be for the next few decades. I can make no plans because I don’t know when/if I’ll have the money to carry them out. It wears on me every day, and grinds me down.

So, all that being said, I should be doing everything that I can to minimize that stress, and allow myself the tools that I need to maintain mental and physical stability. Such as writing this blog. But I don’t. Even now, as I’m writing this, it is a struggle to get it down the page. My mind just keeps telling me to scrap it all, and try again tomorrow. But I need to excise these demons that keep me from doing this more often.

There’s a line in a song that I love, “If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to, and I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd, cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud”. That’s how I feel right now. These thoughts are eating me alive, and if I don’t start writing more often, they’re going to drag me down to a point of no return. So, though this is a struggle to get through, I will continue to do so.

Because in the end, I really do want to find peace of mind. I don’t know where I’ll find it, and I don’t know how I’ll find it, and I don’t know when I’ll find it…

But I do know that I’ll find it eventually.