Summer days

I'm frustrated.

Summer has always been a period of self realization for me. I guess it started with the long summer breaks from years in school. It was the first opportunity you have to extensively look at what happened to you over the course of the year. Where as in winter, it is acceptable to back it in and lay halfway dormant in the cold months; Spring, you are elated over the end of the long winter months and the ability to enjoy some sun and Fall, which always just seemed like a hustle and bustle between holidays and finishing the work of the year, before the year came to end. Summer was a time that I could reflect.

I am frustrated. Frustrated with my life. My lack of inspiration in my writing. Lack of writing thereafter. It seems such a labor for me to write a single sentence. Nothing sounds write to me anymore. I immediately dismiss my ideas as lame or stupid, while everything seems glutted behind a wall of frustration, unable to get out. I can't see my characters anymore. I can't hear the plots being whispered in my head. Dreams don't come to me of scenes that I should write. I simply wake up every morning and think to take my next step and the step after that.

I know, I know. Step back. Breathe. Regain perspective. Tomorrow will come, the sun will rise. You can place any adage here that is applicable.

Change is so hard. Changing who I am, how I approach things. I think the hardest thing about change is not the realization that you are wrong and that something needs to be different. The actual realization is quite easy to see. It is the acceptance of that realization. Truly accepting your faults and shortcomings, not denying them as a part of yourself, something that is immutable to change itself. Realizing that all my years of experience, my intelligence have lead me to the wrong conclusion, that the way I behave is incorrect. Pride for me is the hardest pill to swallow. It is the things that limits me, my growth, stunts my social life, my love life.

But how to just let go?

It so ironic, that in all my insecurities, pride is what I cling to. It makes me persevere when I should not, but holds me back when I should excel. I don't know. I don't have any answers here, no clever adages to input. Nothing to tell myself.

Dreamless shut lids and conscious nightmares of days in constant repeat,

The number of breaths taken counted,

Bite chewed in succession,

Jargons of words said in succession for no other reason than to simply hear their mere utterance

To drink without thirst, eat without hunger

To have no needs other than to restless slumber

This is the house I build for myself

White washed walls devoid of adornment, windows shuttered and boarded shut,

So that I should not recollect the moments passing,

Feelings to lays dormant,

Paintings of vibrant color that now have been muted by the age

The sun light bleaching the color

Returning to a blank canvas

Be still my beating heart

Be still.