A few weeks ago, I had somewhat of an energy awakening. A turn. Or, at the very least, a realization that I needed to do or have somewhat of a 180 in my life and turn my energy from a lingering negative to a consistent positive. It had been at an odd moment because it had appeared on the surface that this year was going so well and moving in just the right direction and yet, upon closer examination I knew that it wasn’t. I still wasn’t being honest with myself. I still was neglecting certain emotional aspects of my life that needed some care. So, one day, when one of my friends that I met in New York had returned for the week and was planning a get together so that everyone could go out and just feel the love and feel the joy, I thought I would also go along for the ride. Except that day just felt off. I was fresh off a Saturday morning work shift, it was 4/20, and I was tired, but I told myself that I had to go. I had to make an appearance even if I knew I wasn’t going to continue with the rest of the group later on. When I got there it was great. It was wonderful to see everyone. The energy there was as warm and welcoming as anyone would hope from a group of friends. It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that despite the energy in the room, I wasn’t on the same page. It was palpable. And the longer I stayed there the more I knew that the dark cloud that I felt over my head could and probably would spread to the rest of the room if I continued on. While everyone was getting ready to leave to move onto the next thing, I went my own way.
That night sucked, but I’m glad it happened. I spent that night alone with my thoughts, bitter, angry, and sad. One my closest friends from Seattle, who also lives in New York, basically called me out on it. He wondered why I decided not to come. He wondered what was wrong and I continued to deflect and deflect and pretend like there wasn’t a problem, even though I knew there probably was. In my defense, I didn’t want to my shitty emotional track to have any effect on the others, especially the friend who was visiting, but we all know in those situations, if we really need to bare down, we can fight through it. I elected to flight instead of fight. I watched a movie that night on my bed, with my mind upside down, and didn’t even have the hope that the next day would be any different.
Except the next day was. It was a sunny day in New York and something felt very off. The funny thing was that what was off wasn’t off at all. I felt driven. I felt focused. I felt energetic. And more than anything, I felt positive. The circumstances of the day were as such: I had a rehearsal for a reading that was going to happen later that week and I had a dinner planned with a friend who was visiting from Seattle. Those were the bookends. I had no idea what was set to happen in between. So there I go to rehearsal and the rehearsal grows great. I won’t read into the signs, but I must admit I might be at my happiest when there is acting and theater or something arts related involved. Before I knew it the three or four hour rehearsal was over with and I had about seven or eight hours to spare before the dinner. When I stepped out of the theater space and into the street the air just felt different. It was like I had all the time in the world. There was no pressure, there was just the joy of being. There was the present tense, without the sadness of the past or the preoccupation of the future. For the first time in a long long time I was cognizant that my feet were touching the ground. The next hour or so was a bit of a blur, but at some point I ended up at the Metrograph where another one of my dear Seattle friends-turned-New-York-transplant resides and I met up with him to tell him how I was feeling with the hope of being able to transfer it to him, to anyone, really. He didn’t have a lot of time, but the connection happened; we talked movies and plays with some of his colleagues as well (which turned into this wonderful rabbit hole of arts appreciation) and then off I went, riding the wave of wherever this new energy would take me.
Funnily enough, it took me about two blocks. I stopped by a cafe that I almost passed on my way to the train station and figured why not actually go in for once. For not being a coffee drinker, I have had more coffee this year than I have in probably my whole life combined and in this particular cafe I decided to order one of the most bougie items imaginable…an oat latte. Before you judge me and put me into an oat latte box, I want you to know two things. Oat milk is pretty fekkin good. And two, an oat latte is REALLY fekkin good. It’s fekkin expensive, but it changes lives. Like wine, I haven’t yet mastered the proper way of drinking a coffee, so I downed it pretty quickly. And as if I didn’t have enough energy before I walked into this establishment, my newfound coffee energy put me into hyperdrive (cue the Star Wars light speed effect). For those who have also had as little coffee as I have in my lifetime, you can attest. Coffee is literally crack. (I’ve never done crack or Adderall or speed, but it’s gotta be the socially accepted equivalent). At first, I never noticed the effect it has on me, but maybe once you get over your tenth cup (in ones lifetime), something clicks. It’s as if I had all these desires to write down everything that had been floating in my mind or circling my brain, all those ideas that had been teasing me from far away claiming that I would never ever get to them. I got one of my journals out and everything just came out. This continued for a couple of hours. My movie ideas journal had several new pages, my daily planner became more organized. I was feeling so so good.
Later that night I had one of the best dinners in recent memory. It was one of those get togethers where you have a tentative plan for a location (somewhere in New York) and idea for a location (a good sports bar to watch the playoffs) and what ends up happening is two lines intersecting, interweaving, and leaving you at a point B that you couldn’t have possible imagined. At one point before the meal started my friend wondered if he could stay for the whole game. By the end of the game, we still had more conversation to spare. I think we ate food, but I don’t remember the food. I think the game was competitive, I just know the team formerly known as the Seattle Supersonics lost. The conversation, that’s what I’ll remember. What began as just a cool little get together turned into a life check-in and a mutual understanding that there were some good good things ahead of us.
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I could go on and on about what it’s been like to wake up grateful every day and thankful to feel like I’m finally in control, but I’m going to take a little turn. This year, I’ve made it my mission to read a book a week. I’m happy to say that mission is still going strong. That week or maybe a full week after I started a book called “Flowers for Algernon.” I’m sure this synopsis won’t do it justice, but if may be so courageous, it follows a man named Charlie Gordon, a mentally challenged man, who gets selected to undergo a surgery to increase his intelligence/IQ, that until that point had only been used on lab rats. It is told from the perspective of Charlie through a series of progress reports, journal entries that document the changes that he experiences before and after the operation. The book is as amazing as it is devastating, a fantastic read, and I felt like I was undergoing the operation with him, although by the end I did feel like an emotional wreck. I’d rather that anyone who is reading this right now read the book for themselves so we can talk about it and discuss instead of me just relaying the contents of the book, but the part of the book that got to me the most, was Charlie’s realization that his emotional growth never catches up nor aligns with his rapid mental/intellectual growth. This might be the hardest part of the book to deal with because you’re listening to him struggling to cope with this. He knows he’s getting smarter. In fact, he’s becoming smarter than the professors that are conducting the experiment, but what he also knows is that with this newfound intelligence he has less of a grasp of what he’s actually feeling. Sadly, he also knows that the results of the experiment will come to an inevitable ending and that is where I stop with the explaining.
As the high of the light that I found some weeks ago has lost some of its original luster, I find myself too wondering what it’ll be like when its over, what it’ll be like when it’s not as golden as it once was. Now, I did not have an intelligence boost by any stretch of the imagination, but it did feel as if that one Sunday I had received a boost of my own—on the emotional side. These past couple of days I must admit I’ve been fearful of regressing back to the point where those grays consume me and that dark cloud follows me wherever I go. You get to a point where you don’t want those good feelings to go away. You don’t want them to end. You want to find a way for your newfound and improved emotional level to find its way in and match up with the other parts of your being and your life that are moving in the right direction because we all know that that emotional element can have its way and derail everything else involved. I’d like to think I’m moving in the right direction. I still feel like over the course of a day, whether its good or bad, I can still manage to make it positive or to make it good. I believe that to be true. I don’t want to see what happens when this personal experiment, this figurative life surgery has run its course. Or maybe I do. Maybe what I’m eager to find out the most is if and when I do go back to that time of feeling those negatives and those bitter and sad and angry and lonely feelings, whether I’ll remember that I know from the depths of my heart and from the inner canals of my brain, that I have the power, strength, and control to pull myself out once again.