living outside the box

About a month ago, I experienced an odd series of dreams. Very vivid and detailed, the story unfolded over three nights as so many acts in a well-structured play. It was both disorienting and exciting to be living this adventurous "alternate reality" in dreamstate, though it made my waking life -- at least temporarily -- appear rather dull in comparison.

I may compose a later blog about the dreams themselves -- though I am also in the process of incorporating them into a larger storytelling framework -- but this experience led me to take a closer look at my waking world, my expectations about life, and where I've been and where I might be going.

These images left me feeling as though I've not accomplished all that much (e.g., never went to grad school in archaeology), that my life is pretty boring, and that I've missed so many opportunities. Of course, all that isn't true -- I've done and accomplished a tremendous amount, not the least of which has been healing a great deal of trauma (no small task). I suppose all of this made me feel old, unrealized, wishing I could go back 15 or 20 years to make some different choices.

But who hasn't felt like that?

The other night, I realized that a big reason I've been feeling so directionless and adrift without an anchor since the cross-country relocation -- from my home state of Virginia to the Pacific Northwest -- is that I am truly outside of the box I'd been living in for the larger part of 35 years. While this was a big motivation for the move -- to put geographical (and thus emotional and psychological) distance between myself and all of those expectations and rules -- I hadn't anticipated floundering on the other side. I suppose I'd figured that once free of the box I had long since outgrown, I'd instantly take off on a determined and calculated path, with absolute certainty and no doubts. Instead, I found myself suddenly disoriented and bewildered, although happily so.

It takes a great deal of discipline and energy to make new choices, and to keep wanting and making those choices every moment of every day; when you're off the familiar tracks, it's easy to just coast around in little circles, without practiced vigilance.

Huh. Ever read Vonnegut's "Timequake"? I am reminded of the moment when people suddenly regain their free will, after having been literally on auto-pilot for ten years, unable to make any choices but simply re-living the previous decade without any ability to choose new outcomes. Suddenly folks are back in charge after growing so deeply complacent, and -- not surprisingly -- all hell breaks lose. They are so used to being powerless that no one has a clue what to do with themselves.

One of my big challenges, of course, is that I am interested in -- and seemingly skilled in -- so many different areas that it is difficult to make solid choices and stick with those paths without getting distracted by all of the other stuff.... In a Sunday afternoon e-mail exchange a couple of weeks back, a friend and I were musing over possible doctoral dissertation topics. I think my "dream thesis" was titled something like, "The Metaphysical Implications of Healing Geometry in the Sacred Dance of Ancient Sumerian Dogs." But even that might not hold my interest long enough for me to complete my dissertation in a timely fashion, as I would likely be distracted by the underwater excavation of some ancient Minoan temple dedicated to an heretical space-god, or by developments in practical healing techniques through applied energy meridians and hypnosis.

But such is the life of ADD genius. (Or so they tell me.) ;)

In the meantime, I am still feeling my way along. I may well have traded one box for another, larger one, but I have yet to discover any new boundaries, and perhaps there is no perimeter or limitation at all.