New Year Kind of thinking .2

By D. Salazar

As in every beginning of a new year, I tend to allow my head to roam around all possibilities of life design, working status, learning experiences and cleansing rituals I can get my hands on, convinced that, even if I can’t do them all right now –how impairing that feels- at least I’ll be able to do the ones I truly like the most. For this I rely solely on that power we humans have, the power of will, to keep attracting those things that attract us.

Choosing a working path is not easy, paradoxically enough we are forced to choose one at the same time our raging hormones can’t even decide on one romantic partner. University age is not a choosing age, at least not for us humans with a foggy but pleasant path spread ahead.

I prefer to live day by day.

While trying to decide a working path for this new year, I realized that the one that seems both intelligent and attractive to my intellect at the same time, requires money and time, maybe too much money and too much time. Considering that I also chose to pay for an activity that makes me incredibly happy and keeps my over enthusiastic head away from dark thoughts about the emptiness of life –and how we came to die and everything is useless and other fatalistic thoughts of the sort- I’m gonna need tons of money.

When you realize you need money to get money through a better job, and you also need money to have fun so that the process of getting money is not so tiresome, you fall into depression. A little voice awakes in my head and says “wtf man! When do I get to live and enjoy living?”

With some effort, I extracted the voices –real or imaginary- of the various people I deeply admire. I find they are the best resource against depression.

One of those voices, raspy and smoky, coming from the kitchen table, said “I have never concerned myself with the reasons I would be remembered by”.

Another one, rather sombre and smelling of wine, said “I only attempt to expose the manner in which I have come to certain truths”.

And then, the greatest woman who has ever lived says, while sitting in a corner sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup, “Freely be, whatever you are”.

Like a mother’s lullaby, these words clear the dark cloud of depression and get my ass on my working chair again. Whatever my choice of work, whatever the amount of money and time I need to spend to achieve that choice, doesn't really matter.

We admire in others the qualities that are inside us, yet unexplored.

New Year Kind of Thinking

By D. Salazar

Faithful to the worldwide tradition of ‘finally deciding to change my life and become that thing I always wanted to be’ –for better or worse- here I am, writing at least a page a day, following Stephen King’s advices. I started the task where most of us would, googling “writing tools” and expecting to find a software that would enable me, the writer, to be an unparalleled genius and cure writers block and find that powerful will which will sweep my fingers upon the keyboards while writing the new millennium’s Swann’s Way.

Instead, I found a picture of a pen.

The right side of my brain grinned gleefully and the left side, then they both settled to write something.

The other thing that tends to impair writing –my writing at least- is the publishing issue. I’m an ambitious person, I want to see my work out there and I want fans wearing my signature on their t-shirts and standing outside my hotel window craving for a line of my magical thinking, like some South American writing messiah (then you wake up and Paulo Coelho is still there). I went around newspapers checking what is being said out there, trying to find a tiny little spot on the market for me, but newspapers are too wrapped up around politics (after all, newspapers tend to be used to pick up disgusting things you don’t want to touch with your bare hands), and I’m not a political writer, I don’t know anything about politics beyond being able to tell when someone is being stupid or downright genius -the line is very very thin.

The second before I reached that state of mental chaos which preludes writers block, I realized I have a blog and felt stupid enough to write without the urge of ambition.
My words may not be worthy of a fanatic wave, but they put my brain in motion, so as not to die completely unnoticed.