Predated post from November 9, 2016

I like who I used to be.

So much passion, so many teeming ideas, endlessly creative, driven, curious, interested, alive.

Now, I feel only half here. Getting through life, making a living. Not really disliking what I do. Just no longer involved, passionate, creative, curious, interested.

I feel so much less an inspiration, pedestrian. I spend my time watching TV, or staying busy with work, in part just to keep myself occupied.

I find I have so little energy. It's a vicious cycle, no energy to think, no thinking saps my energy.

It's like I'm one of Ivan Klíma's characters: intellectuals, professors, doctors, engineers, creators, sweeping up the streets, because I've been banned from my true vocation for being an “enemy of the state”. Of course, his characters were modeled on their real-world counterparts. Only, I've no shackles imposed on me, except perhaps the drive to shore up our finances, to make a living, pay the bills, get us to the next step.

So much of my world is started but not ended. I've sometimes thought that were better, pitying those who had already realized their rewards, their accolades, their Nobels or Pulitzers, their stage fame, wondering what's next? I reveled in potential.

But sometimes, I've felt that very same potential, that striving, was a hollow husk, never quite solid, never filled out, never realized. And now I find myself between, feeling useful often enough, but longing for what I feel I've lost, wondering: okay, so now I'm useful; is this all there is?

Partly, working for a company, I'm limited in my expression, fearing if I let myself free, I may be cut down, for violating corporate policy, or stepping over some arbitrary legal team's line of appropriate conduct.

But fearing if I step out of the sheltered protection my job offers me, we won't make enough money to support the lifestyle we want. Funny that, I feel dissatisfied with the life I have, yet I hold on to the ability to maintain it. Perhaps, I fear letting go again, I may fall too far, and that life would be worse.

Partly, I'm motivated to get us that base, that financial foundation from which I can feel secure, free to take risks again. We're just not there yet. But I fear, such thinking is a slippery slope: when is enough enough? How will I know?