So, I still occasionally write in the journal I kept this summer. Here's an excerpt from during the MCC ride in the beginning of August that caught my eye as I flipped through the notebook to find a new page to start writing on the other day (this was one of those times where I was "picking at my existential scabs", as Jon Krakauer puts it). But first, a little context: the ride started on the previous Sunday (so this was just the third day), and at this point it was dark, most people were in bed (their tents), and I was lying in my tent, writing this by the light of my headlamp. Don't worry, none of this is pushing on depression or anything like that, just struggling with the frustration of feeling somehow too involved in the stories portrayed by some of the books I read. Here we go [only slightly abridged/edited]:
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8-4-09 9:55pm Tues
Should sleep. Feel tired. Started reading "Through Painted Deserts." I'm sure it has some good thoughts, but it doesn't feel helpful reading books like this or "Into the Wild" - they frame life in a way that is much more poetic than I experience it. I do believe that people can go through life thinking those thoughts in the moment, not just retrospectively, but whenever I try to, all I end up feeling is, I don't know, unfulfilled? It makes me want to live a life bigger than life *is* - to experience life as I was not meant to experience it.
It fills me with a sadness that I have scaled the heights of mediocrity, but for some reason can only know what it's like to go further vicariously - appreciating the work accomplished by "kindred spirits." Spirits that were able to Go The Distance.
But it's not really that, is it? It's more of a wistfulness that comes, a contemplative wistfulness that brings with it sorrow over whatever is wrong in whatever small part of the world that is under scrutiny. It heralds an empathic wish to conform to that particular brand of extraordinary, and the let-down with the knowledge that I can never reach the heights of whatever great person because I am not that person - that I do not *wish* to pursue their dream. That means I must define my *own* heights, my *own* goals, my *own* greatness to be attained. I must define my own self as an absolute entity - no longer relative to or distinct from those I know.
Much can be said for choosing heroes and attempting emulation. I want to be someone that those who are dear to me can be proud of. I *need* to be someone that *I* can be proud of.
*That* needs to be my challenge - my goal. To identify, get to know, and live for myself. Not to live for myself in terms of a selfish life, but as in a life that I can be comfortable with as an independent individual with nothing to prove, nobody to impress, and no need to worry if someone likes me enough, over whether I am the friend I can best be and need to be, and over my self-victimized state, bemoaning my short-comings and throwing "Why me?" at God and whoever else will listen.
I don't even know. This is mildly depressing and is far too much to tackle now. I don't know how or when I'll be able to, but this is not the time. I need a few more days on the train. Or solo biking. Or solo hiking. Solo. Alone. *Solo yo*.
10:20. Good night.
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And then the next morning in another entry (I took a rest day on the 4th day of the MCC ride), I had a few quotes written down from "Through Painted Deserts," and one of my favorites (and certainly most relevant to this entry) is from p. 244:
"...life is not a story about me, but is being told to me, and I can be glad of that."
Thank you, Donald Miller.
I started the summer with a 100 page (college ruled, of course) composition book. It's dark blue and has some fuschia and yellow and blue paisley-ish designs on the covers. I filled probably close to 80 of the pages by the time I finished my biking - some reflection like what I have above (not much, though). A lot of it is description, record of events, or just plain stream-of-consciousness rambling. There's even a recipe or two I picked up along the way. Though it's not full now, it probably will be by the end of the year. It will be the first journal I've ever filled. I'm not much of a journaler. I wouldn't have been this summer, either, if I hadn't had so much time to kill in city parks through Kansas and on the train and other random places like that. I probably won't keep it up like this. Already I'm not writing every week, let alone every day. Funny how things like that change so quickly (even though I still have loads of free time during the job search).
