When You Follow Your Dreams

Once again I want so badly to drink tonight: have a six or two of beer, smoke a couple of packs of cigarettes, play some video games.  (You'd think I could just play video games alone, but my anxiety and poor mood have to be artificially smoothed out to open the pathways of pleasure.)  I'm not going to, but I gave it a few seconds serious consideration on the drive home.  It hasn't even been a bad day.  I got a lot done at work, but it was a long day and a challenging day.  And then I come home to nothing but a seemingly endless stream of more shit that needs to get done.

As good as I've been on all fronts, I have to resign myself to the fact that the progress I'm making with all of my current challenges is necessarily small and incremental.  I'm so programmed by books and movies into thinking that I'm one montage away from a perfect existence.  But I'm not going to lose all of this weight...or get out of my massive debt...or sort my fucking life out (mate) overnight.  It will take continuous positive steps and strides—day after day after day—with no great reward, no crashing cymbals, not even anyone else to acknowledge it.  That's what I have to wrap my head around. The dramatic alcohol-down-the-drain / flushing-the-pills / cutting-up-the-credit-cards / pitching-the-cake-and-donuts moments are the easy part, the gratifying part.  That's why I've done them over and over again 10,000 times in the past 30 years.  It's the follow-through that is the hard bit, and that which remains undiscovered country for me, even well into middle age.

You turn to find the light has faded
You wonder what it was you were reaching for
How quickly you have lost your way
It's always when you think you've got it made

You take one step after the other
At times you may not know which way to go
You open one door just to find another
Someday you will begin, begin to know

{Missing Persons, "The Closer That You Get"}