Day Fifty-Eight: Why Am I Doing This?

For fifty-eight days, I have been sitting down at a computer and writing. I write about life, I write about moving, cooking, dogs, people, and things that annoy me. For fifty-eight days, I've chronicled my thoughts habitually. For fifty-eight days, I've formed words into sentences, and sentences into roughly-hewn paragraphs. And I can't for the life of me remember why I started writing everyday.

I know I didn't want to bore myself, and that I felt like I needed to use the talents God gave me rather than let them sit in my brain and do nothing while I aged and got old and too busy to do it anymore. But really, now I realize that it doesn't really make a difference. If I like it, I should do it, and if I don't, then why does it matter? Luckily, I like it. I like sitting down to write everyday, assuming I can think of something to write about. Most of the time, unfortunately, I can't think of anything decent to write about, but I usually come up with something somewhat decent and put something together. My first few posts were a much higher caliber of writing than a lot of what I have been writing lately -- more descriptive, less introspective, and more creative with a larger range of vocabulary. But it occurred to me this evening that I have been writing so habitually that I don't even think about why I do it anymore: because I like it.

I make myself write everyday because I'm lazy, and given the opportunity I will many times lay on the couch and watch Food Network over doing just about any kind of personally enriching creative activity. And I think in that regard, I'm doing the right thing. But I have to be doing it for the right reason, too. And thankfully, I think I am.

It reminds me on a regular basis why I chose to go to college for writing, and why at one point I wanted to make it my career. Because I love it, and it comes fairly naturally to me. So I'll keep doing it, because I need a kick in the ass. And maybe at some point, I'll strengthen my weakness of being absolutely terrible at coming up with decent conclusions to things I write about.

Day Sixteen: Do We Make Ourselves Miserable?

I think my life is pretty common in that, as the saying goes, "when it rains, it pours." When one thing goes wrong, at least one other major tragedy puts more than a hiccup in my day, thus making the first ripple in the wave of unpleasantry harder to overcome. From what I can tell, most people have the same mark on their own lives. If a car breaks down, the paycheck that would pay for it is lost. If a family member becomes ill, a family heirloom will get lost somewhere in the house, never to be found. And usually, both experiences magnify each other, making the other seem more important and tragic. Since the situation is so difficult, is life trying to tell us something by sending us sometimes an almost overwhelming plethora of horrible?

I'm not entirely sure if I'm a believer in the idea that there are "tests" in life that are meant to make us stronger and help us better understand ourselves and what is most important to us, but I still believe there has got to be something to this strange little phenomenon of life. Do the planets align just right to make our lives fall apart little bits at a time every once in awhile? I don't know of anyone (who hasn't had a real, major tragedy occur in their lives, like a child dying or a house burn down) who has steadily had a regular pattern of bad happening to them over a course of time. It always comes in clusters of multiple annoyances and tragedies that put a real cramp in a day, week, or even month. But the possibility also exists that such things don't happen in multiples, and that people are just more mentally weak when they're emotionally distraught, so other, smaller problems that they would otherwise be able to handle seem mountainous. Excuse me, but I need to get philosophical for a moment.

How much of our tragedy to we create? If there is nothing to fear but fear itself, is there nothing to feel sorrowful about than sorrow itself? If someone close to a person dies, they feel sorrow because they are gone, but they also have the potential to feel happiness because they are no longer suffering, or because they've possibly just left to experience another plane of existence that might be pretty damn cool. So who knows, they might actually be the lucky ones. Although this is a pretty far-fetched reality, it is possible. We are capable of feeling anyway we make ourselves feel. If we choose to embrace tragedy and remind ourselves of the negative aspects of a situation, are we causing our own pain?

Partially, I think my own theory could very well be a load of crap. While it's possible to try to change the way we feel about certain situations, we can't help our subconscious from being truly upset about something that makes us unhappy. But it is an interesting thing to think about. I know more than once, I have been what seemed like unbearably unhappy about something, and then suddenly I physically could not feel sorrow anymore, so I stopped, immediately. I literally woke up, and wasn't sad or angry about my situation anymore. So either that was my body's way of telling my brain to stop going haywire because my sadness would start physically affecting my health soon, or I subconsciously decided I didn't want to deal with waking up sad anymore. I don't think I've lived enough to know whether or not this is true, but it definitely is worth pondering. Do you think you make yourself sad?