building blocks
blocks- just blocks.
this writing sphere has been barren and missing attention for a few months
uninspired, busy, overwhelmed, lacking drive.
firstly, seek for people who ensure you become none of the above.
it's not their job to inspire you- but it is your job to make sure you are inspired by them.
it's still your responsibility.
but that's just it.
we have stumbling blocks.
we have building blocks
sometimes just blocks.
blocks that together make this.
///
The last few months have months have been mostly a blurr.
I regret to report that I was trying to fast forward through them to be where I am at right now.
In a new apartment, settling in, gathering pace, feeling settled.
If anything is true in this life, it's that the most consistent factor in life is change.
For better or for worse, it's life's agent, and going against it does us no good.
Soooo let's back up.
I took the summer off.
I packed my shit into 8 BIG boxes, I donated clothes that I rarely wore, I sent Wishbone off to Portland to live with his real mom, I left my job, I bought a flight home and I spent summer in Canada for the first time in a long time.
Summer at home was bliss.
family time, hot canadian summers, tennis courts, golf swings.
folk fest, farmers markets, coffee dates, river valley runs, cottage outings.
my friends.
ugh, it was so nice to have my friends back.
you can meet people all around the world who you will build very close relationships with, but certain people from your past will always hold a big chunk of my heart.
my family.
my mom and dad are becoming all the more important in my life, and goodbyes are the most difficult with them. And Alex & Ana are just growing weeds who are bigger and brighter every time I see them.
a gift of peace, and a reminder of why I needed to do what I was about to do...
Before leaving Shanghai in early July, I interviewed with about 40 people, online and offline, in and out of Asia, not really knowing where the road was going to take me. I figured if nothing compelling presented itself, the best decision was to move back home, and then figure it out. BUT. But, everything in my gut was telling me otherwise.
My friends in Shanghai urged me to stay. To reconsider my recent struggles with work and the city. To realize the special nature of not only this amazing city, but the special opportunities that lie here. To those that did, thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you.
With four opportunities, came a decision to stay put...sorta (After two months off).
Nietzsche.
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!...
It is also an agonizing, hazardous undertaking thus to dig into oneself, to climb down toughly and directly into the tunnels of one's being. How easy it is thereby to give oneself such injuries as no doctor can heal. Moreover, why should it even be necessary given that everything bears witness to our being – our friendships and animosities, our glances and handshakes, our memories and all that we forget, our books as well as our pens. For the most important inquiry, however, there is a method. Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: "What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?" Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self. Compare these objects, see how they complement, enlarge, outdo, transfigure one another; how they form a ladder on whose steps you have been climbing up to yourself so far; for your true self does not lie buried deep within you, but rather rises immeasurably high above you, or at least above what you commonly take to be your I....
Your true educators and cultivators will reveal to you the original sense and basic stuff of your being, something that is not ultimately amenable to education or cultivation by anyone else, but that is always difficult to access, something bound and immobilized; your educators cannot go beyond being your liberators. And that is the secret of all true culture: she does not present us with artificial limbs, wax-noses, bespectacled eyes – for such gifts leave us merely with a sham image of education. She is liberation instead, pulling weeds, removing rubble, chasing away the pests that would gnaw at the tender roots and shoots of the plant; she is an effusion of light and warmth, a tender trickle of nightly rain...
What have you truly loved thus far? What has uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?
There are stumbling block.
There are building blocks.
There are blocks.
The path has not been straight, nor will it ever be.
It was been murky.
It has its blind spots.
But importantly, the path these last few years has been uplifting; something I truly loved.
And that in itself, was my answer...
and here I am.
it's my first night in my new flat on fuxing lu.
the torturous task of finding this apartment was all worth it.
it was just mandatory to write tonight.
though Nietzsche gave way to thoughts, Picasso was the first to mark written territory on these walls with:
to know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.
