Engaged

So after some time of kicking around the back to blogging thing I've gotten to the point were I have to say I'm going to blog. I like to write it makes me happy. I got into writing a journal when I was 16 and I have kept one in one form or another since then. I've lost some, I've burned some, some are just mental notes or thoughts on scraps of paper here and there. I like it, it allows me to say what I feel in the now and it may not be what anyone else thinks or feels but it's me doing me. I can't help or change if anyone who reads this walks away with something different from what I got from the process but if it helps them great, if it doesn't, all I can say is it's more for me but in an unselfish way. If that makes sense.


As to the title no I'm not engaged to anyone ... as the guide says on the cover DON'T PANIC! It's a command as well or a verb to signify the start of something. I start stop start stop etc.... all the time doing various things. So I guess it is the start or restart of the blogging but it's more than that too.

We get caught up in boxes of things or places and get lost in the process of, rather than getting lost in the moment of things. As I was doing a doodle today of stick figures in peril I started putting them into boxes, each box had a specific snippet of life inside. Only one second in the life of the stick person. The entertained, the sad moment, the happy one, the death scene, etc.

We some times get caught in that box where the embarrassing thing has happened, the depressing thing or other event. We can't destroy the boxes but we can escape them so I started putting stick figures in the process of leaving their boxes. One on a zip line, another with a chainsaw, my creative little escapes from the things that are anchoring me here inside my boxes.

I read somewhere that the only prison that can ever hold a person is the one where you control their mind. So many times I do find myself imprisoned by the controls society defines or in the boxes if you will, some of them are built by me. Others that we are bombarded by from every direction and we all start doing the Stepford walk and talk. "It's a rattrap Judy and We've been caught" ** I'm caught too probably more often than some but being aware of the trap is part of the solution the other part is doing.

So to steal a line from the movie platoon, I'm not sure if it was in the book as well, "free the mind and the ass will follow". Know you are not trapped and you won't be. You may not always be able to do the things you want when you want but you can do them. And in the between times let your mind wander a bit, day dream for a few minutes. Look off into space and go somewhere.

You are where your mind is and you can still be anchored to reality and start cutting escape holes and digging tunnels out of the boxes then the next thing you know it's not so bad. Try to get back to the place where playing with the box was as much or more fun than the toy that came inside. I know not a very capitalistic thing to say but that's the point redefine success and happiness in your own terms rather than someone else's. You'll find you are better off for it and if someone says I don't know why you do that, say because it makes me happy. If they don't get it they aren't going to and if they try to change you or say it's dumb they haven't found a way to be happy that goes out side the boxes or they just can't see your path from their box.

Anyway, that's my chainsaw through the wall of the box it may make sense to you or not. It makes sense to me.




** Lyric from the song "Rattrap" by The Boomtown Rats