Fear and Loathing in South Dakota

Every day is something different, and yet it is all very much the same. You wake up, you get ready to face the day, you live it, then you prepare for the next day. How much you live in the moment is up to you every day. You decide whether or not you keep your thoughts and are mindful of the present, or you look too much to the past and reminisce just a little too much. Well, here has been my issue. I live too much for the future. I've been so concerned with what is down the road that I can't even see what is right in front of me. I'm so "futurecentric" that I think I somewhat sabotage the present at the expense of making what's on the horizon a better place. I've come to the conclusion that this is the wrong way to live. There is only so much that is within your grasp or power and any given moment. There is even less that can sometimes be harnessed for the future. My new outlook is that you cannot build a better future if you aren't paying attention to the road that you are paving right now. Sounds sort of corny doesn't it? I guess if there is one thing I do right it's not take myself too seriously.

I'm a control freak. These days, I can't tell if I'm correcting that issue, or if I'm just doing a good job of concealing it. A few things were out of my immediate control the past few days. One was situational, the other was internal. People that are not close to me will have no idea what I am talking about, because they don't see the controlling part of me because, quite frankly, only the people that I love the most have ever been privy to one of my biggest vices. Maybe not exactly a vice, but the definition is all what you make of the word. It's hard when you really just have to let things be and take their course. If a certain thing is meant to happen, then it will. If it isn't, then of course it won't. It doesn't take a genius to come to this conclusion.

What I am vowing to do is to not place myself in the situations that I put myself in sometimes. How much can you control? What do you have to relinquish to really push forward? I'm trying very hard to find a balance somedays. I'll say that the situational issue was involving someone I care very deeply for, and the internal struggle was trying to determine how to handle the situation. I've never been a person to think out how I'm going to react or feel. To give a small detail, something somewhat terrifying was going on at the moment, and I did nothing really but fuel the fire at the time. Of course after things had died down all was forgiven, however living in the moment you have to be sure to monitor what you are doing and know how it is going to affect the other person. I slipped up, I didn't do excatly what I set out to do. Basically, I let my emotions get the better of me for the first time with this person. It's really not as huge of a bad situation as it may seem, however this is where my fork in the road is.

If I had to go back and look into all the relationships that I've ever had and tried to find a point where things started to slip away from me, and my general insanity started to take a toll on who I was with, I couldn't find one darn issue that started the ball rolling. Now, I've been doing things differently with this one and I really see no reason to change at this point. I'm going to remember how I felt when the situation happened, I'm going to remember what it felt like when she told me how she felt afterwards, and I'm going to remember what I felt like a couple hours later when I talked to her again.

Have you even been sitting watching something on television and it was too embarassing or uncomfortable to watch, so much so that you had to change the channel? I've been doing that in real life for a very long time. Now it's time that I sort of put the remote down and sit on my hands and live in the moment and not dodge bullets. This isn't to say that I'm going to dwell on every little thing that happens, not at all. I'm just going to do less ignoring. How's that?

And now for a less vague tangent...

We get precious few days together every month, and I'll have to admit that a lot of the time I was down there last I could only really focus on how much it would hurt to leave. That started the day I got there until I left. I spent almost the entire time worrying about how much I would miss her while I was actually with her. How insane is that? I can tell you that it's not the way I want to spend the rest of our time together, and I'm glad the lightbulb when on over my head, because I want to get the most out of every minute and second that I am with this person, not worry about how it's going to be when I'm not. It's unfair to her, and it's unfair to me also. I don't want to get to the point of thinking that it's too hard and not worth the effort that both of us are putting into this relationship. This is one of the most positive (ok fine, I've got to stop downplaying this) is the most positive thing that has happened to me ever. I'm not going to let my BS stand in the way of something that is right for once in my life.

Am I giving myself too much of a pep talk on this? Does it seem like I have to pump myself up to be ready for the next several months to a year? No. This is me correcting 10 years worth of mistakes and miscues and turning something great into something that can last for a very very (I think you know what I mean) long time. I know this is going to be vague to almost anyone that reads this, but I hope your are catching the point of this and not just trying to get the juicy scoop on what's going on with your's truely (har har). I just feel awake in this one, I don't feel like I'm just going through the motions anymore. I finally feel just good and alive these days, and it's really a wonderful feeling. I just want it to last, that's all...