Of Growth - An Introduction

I woke up today, in my own room, woke up at my on leisure, took a shower, started my laundry, cooked some rice, ate half the pot, came to the coffeehouse, checked my Fantasy Football team, listened to the Garion vol. 2 in my headphones and logged onto my Blog.

Lately, I've felt like I'm in control of my life.  A fiction among many fiction: tomorrow, North Korea could go to war with the South, and two of my best friends in the world would be on the border of bloody, horrible conflict.  The price of the rice I buy might go up, MC Meta and Nachal could be enlisted into the service, the dollar inflated and the cost of my coffee rise as a result, California's water shortage could lead to rations and the fact our drier requires three hours to undampen a full load would lead to shorter showers.

But yet, I feel like I am in control of my life.  I have my health in line better than it has been my entire adult life, especially physical, but also mentally and socially.  I don't NEED people like I used to in my youth.  I'm don't just enjoy writing, better, I am content with the action of it.

So, I was bumping Epik High Vol. 4 Disc 2 track 15 ("Fly" Remix) and I thought to myself, when did it all click?  When did life get so much better than it was, when a good day was a special event, when contentment was a sour word...to where my bad days now are events, and thoroughly good days are the norm?

The answer is, it didn't really click at all.  It's been, and still is, a continuous series of transition periods and habit reformations over the last two years that have allowed everything to come into place.

It started by denying myself the negative habits that had been part and parcel of my self-destructive tendencies.  Quitting soda and replacing it with unsweetened herbal ice tea really was the beginning of everything.  I realized soda was only serving one positive purpose: it kept me awake when I was tired with a mild caffeine boost. Other than that, it packed on extra, useless calories, killed my metabolism, and made me feel bloated...

After two weeks of quitting, and feeling better about the whole deal, I remembered Doug Rice's words, that he used for sentences in a short story, but that I transposed into life:

Everything in your life should be doing more than one thing for you.

So I started cutting back.  I quit fast food for a two month period.  I quit alcohol for eight months.  I disconnected myself from those things that enabled more bad behaviors than good behaviors.  I had to strip myself to bare materials so I could build on a new foundation.

And quite often, their were slips.  I would fall into terrible moods for no reason.  I would strongly desire to be like a person in ways I couldn't yet be: strong like my friend Joe, as easy with life as Chieng, as dutiful as Ken, as motivated as Autumn, as passionate as Inga, as brilliant as Kalan, as honest and sweet as Mark and Sarah Lanning have been with each other...this was not jealousy, but rather, my recognition that I was falling short of a ceiling, a ceiling external to my self.

But I wasn't there yet.  And, quite often, these are the bar-setters, ideals; to aim for one would be to turn my energy into disarray, to make my growth inorganic.  And frankly, experience, and the comfort with oneself necessary to properly contextualize these experiences, was going to take time.

So everytime i got anxious, that I saw myself not where I wanted to be, I reminded myself of a poem I read for my Prosody Final Paper...

In life, we may fly on a plane, and travel 3,000 miles in six hours, but in reality...how many steps did we actually take?  How much did we actually travel, the sounds of children, the peanuts, the lunch?  Six hours of life is all we lived, even as the world passed by below us.

We are human, and life is lived one step at a time.  Be patient.  Growth happens one step at a time.

The last six months has really seen me building on a foundation Stan Harms, my Precalculus teacher at Folsom High who re-instilled confidence into my academic endeavors.  He once pulled me aside after one class one day as I was walking out the door, after everyone had left for sixth period.

"Big Boy," he said, "The only thing that matters in life is accomplishments."

When I had figured out what habits I had been using to enable my self-destructive moods, I was able to not just complete tasks, but, I can say, for the first time in my life, garner a real sense of accomplishment in what I do.

Completing tasks and accomplishing them are two completely different things, and achieving is a third...that's the lesson I learned the hard way.  Completion occurs when an action is ended and the job done.  In college, I completed assignments, often with vigor, resolve, and a mania bred from an obsessive need, and in doing so, I didn't just complete tasks, I achieved.

But achievement is a third concept, apart from completion and accomplishment.  Achievement is inherently an external fulfillment from completing a task.

Accomplishment, what I've found for myself now, is internal gratification from a completed task.  It is the satisfaction with my own efforts, without feeling like achieved something FOR the world outside of my reality, and without the cold immorality of completing a task.  I know the difference between completing a task that sucks my energy dry, achieving a success by throwing energy for some purpose that enables co-dependence as often as it produces growth, and accomplishing a personal project that produces growth and asserts my autonomy in my own life.

Writing is breath, Doug Rice once told me.  Funny thing: I haven't wheezed all winter.  It might be the weight loss that's curbed my seasonal asthma.  Maybe I finally learned to write for myself.  But I know my writing doesn't have the manic energy that powered my prose when I used my assignments to act as a weapon, attempting to coerce me into respecting my effort.  I know I'm not chasing the Lacanian object, unachievable, but I know, with my bare materials, I can put in a new kind of energy into my work.

An energy of accomplishment.  An energy that utilizes my energy in an efficient, honed, delicately balanced and crafted way.

A sustainable energy, for a sustainable Frank.