Beginning anew

My new blog begins here, I believe. At the start of things.

My last blog, Now That It's In The Rearview, was about my trip to Europe and reflecting on my life during that amazing, mind-expanding, eye-opening vacation. I feel like, every time I want to post to that, I stop and don't want to add to it. It's such a unique and complete piece of my life that I feel like tampering or adding to it would be like planting seeds amongst the thriving flowers. So I won't. I'll start this one.

Much as my last blog is a time-capsule of what my journey entailed and what my thoughts on each day were as they unfolded, this web space is more for what I'm doing now. I don't want to make a commitment to myself that anything is going to look one way or another or what it'll entail, but it'll be more of a rough sketch of what I'd like to see happen, or what I'm up to at the moment and where I plan to take it.

Recently I've felt pretty stifled by obligations to school, work, money, the LSAT, and such that I've just wanted to break out and do something entirely new and creative. I've felt very inorganic, like I'm doing for some predetermined reason, and less out of simple desire to do so. Sometimes necessity can be quite the mother to invention, and I do not wish to cast any doubt over the fact that in my life, I am very happy doing what I am doing. But as with everything in living, one must act in balance.

Due to my inorgania (which I wish was actually a word, as I have quite a new-found fondness for it), I have been productive. I'm applying to internships, I'm earning good money, I'm becoming more responsible for my actions and my future, I'm going to graduate early, and I'm the only one accountable for the way my life is moving. That's good. The bad that comes with that is the unavoidable feeling of that, while this is all by choice and happily done so, I feel like what I'm up to is always for some greater defined purpose. I'm studying for the LSATs because I want to go to Law School and I want to go to one of merit. So I happily study for them. I want to help my family out in the money department, so I am graduating early. So I happily take summer classes to make that a real possibility. I want to be able to put some money away and take some financial culpability for my life, so I happily work my job and try to put some money away.

While I do everything happily, sometimes I just want to just create something out of nothing. I want to do something for the sake of a more immediate, tangible goal. But I don't want that creation to come via the harm of something else. In fact, that's the absolute last thing I'd want. I'd rather just pursue my goals I listed above, 100 times out of 100, if in any way my creating would jeopardize my primary goals. I just want to have something I can call my own, something I can be proud of, and something that I did out of a pure desire to simply do it and create.

I can't paint, so I won't. I'm a terrible artist with a pen, pencil, pastel, pad, etc, and I don't want to be good at that. I can't play an instrument worth anything, and I don't particularly want to learn how to, as any real instrument of the "pick-up and play" variety just doesn't appeal to me for one reason or another due to it being cliche or unwieldy.

But, I do have a few ideas of how to create, some of which are already in the making. One is my garden that I have planted and nurtured from seed. It's a silly little thing, really. My beans never really took off and they died as I didn't thin them all that well, but some have survived. My sunflowers look healthy. My peppers are doing fantastic, as is my little pumpkin patch, and my tomatoes look healthy too. My radishes already came up and were beauties to behold too, and I was very proud of them, showing everyone who came over just how well they were doing.

In a microcosmic way, radishes are indicative of what I'm trying to accomplish: they weren't of any worldly merit, really, you could buy them at the store and not everyone likes them. It probably cost more to grow them than to buy them, but I grew them anyway and damnit they brought me a lot of happiness, those $.89 seeds did.

I want to get my hands dirty. I want to create for the sake of using my human resources to do so. And so I will. This blog will be the touch-stone for that creating, and what I really am thinking about doing. My next project will be much larger in scale and more intense in scope, along with much bigger rewards and much larger margin for error, but regardless of what happens, I think what I'm hoping to achieve will be so, and that's the sense of accomplishment in learning something you know nothing about but appreciate, and going from there. For what it is, I'll unveil bits and pieces, but until then, I'm just glad I have this place to start with and finally put my feelings to paper.

Craig