Sparing Change

There often arises an unsettling, gnawing feeling in my gut.

It is the awareness of the toiling complexities of life belching out a hazy, familiar smoke that wraps around me like a comforting cushion. It is molded and shaped like a river rock worn smooth to fit my body and roll through the grooves of my life thus far. It rides perfectly along the track and has no need or ability to deviate. Every so often, this smoky cocoon will separate ever so briefly, and I can steal a look at everything else out there, things not on my own well traveled track.

And its exciting.

It reminds me that I need to be challenged. It reminds me that I need to be stimulated. When I become so familiar with everything in my lil’ sphere of influence that it moves into a firm classification of mediocrity, I understand that something must be done. When I know that I am no longer rewarding my spirit and creative cauldron through my thoughts and actions, then something must be done.

Its akin to seeing great unrest or injustice and doing nothing about it other than complaining. At least doing nothing smacks of a dedication to apathy, rather than being a useless complainer.

AND oh man and boy howdy, can I complain. Made it from the regionals to the nationals and stole 1st in Competitive Complaining I did.

Those complaints were the escaping results of me ignoring the building pressure in my gut. The ever increasing unsettling, gnawing feeling that I was avoiding something that I desperately needed for my survival. Change. I need change not just for its own sake, but because I have keenly settled in and accepted a fantastic wealth of mediocrity.

Grandiose and privileged? Maaaaaybe. But I believe that we all know what we are here to do. Its programmed into our cells at life’s boot up and through the course of the crappy 3rd party (possibly pirated) life software that we run. The trick is simply listening for the clues. Somewhere throughout our lives we are handed these clues, like a neat treasure hunt. If we are astute enough, if we look closely enough and if we listen hard enough we can get enough of the clues to assemble the map. Then we can use it as a guide to our “destiny”. Of course, destiny being the actions or events that our natural biological diagram plus our life’s experiences sum up as. Don’t forget to add a lil’ luck and season to taste. Or in the case of my current studio PC, that destiny would entail bad RAM, random inexplicable sluggishness and the good ol’ BSOD. I know, PC vs. Mac and all that jazz. That’s enough debate for another topic which we shan’t be digging into here.

So I’ve listened. I have looked. I have astute-itated. I have nearly assembled the entire map from the clues. I know that I need to spend my time in creative efforts, and need to build my own sustainability (in the case of the current culture that I live in, this includes fiscal sustainability) through creative efforts. I need to be challenged. I need different environments, different activities and tasks. I need to commit myself to things that really matter to ME and continue to grow and evolve through them. Through these things, I find happiness.

I have actually assembled my life thus far in a shrewd attempt to avoid a great many of these things. Out of fear, or the uncertainty of the path. The need (or is it want?) to feel safe and snug inside the hazy, smoke cocoon of mediocrity. It fits, but it isn’t really comfortable…because I need to grow.

So, again we get to the blah, blah, blah section of this post/rant.

Sean sums it up:
So, I have decided with the stunning efforts of my beautiful fiance-soon-to-be-indentured-wife, that we will be moving to the sweltering desert state of Arizona. There, I will be forced to confront a multitude of the things that I have avoided in this life, the least of which will be scorpions, spiders and rattlers. Through this process, I will evolve and grow as well learn about the miracle known as anti-venom.

I will dive in to my career as a voice talent full time and grab the reins of my creative and financial future rather than be a passive, complaint-filled observer.

And when it all comes crashing down, I’ll simply plead to the judge and jury that my cells told me to do it.

-Crisden