Allow me to tell you the story of a fantastic musical event which took place only a few nights ago. A great team of willing volunteers came together to put on an event which surpassed all expectations. The night drew to a close and all was well. But a blackness crept into the room and lingered, seeking to devour a poor victim.

Okay, enough melodrama. The blackness was actually black shade cloth, which was lying on the ground waiting to be folded up. And of course, I was the one who managed to slip on it and fall very hard on my left arm.

It broke.

So now I am sitting at home, unable to play piano, type with both hands, drive myself anywhere or even stretch my left arm.

This is an unusual kind of life for me. I am so used to being able to do whatever I want in my own capacity, but now I am curtailed. In truth, it is quite frustrating – everything that I would choose to do to relax or unwind or relieve stress seems to require the use of my left hand. My entire life has had to be rescheduled, and not without some pain.

This is a six-week intermission.

As I sit here and pen (key?) this entry, I am no more than 15 metres from the water’s edge. I drink plunger coffee and my favourite music plays in the background. I am relaxed, and much more so than I have been in recent memory. In the last two days I have done little and thought much. It is good for the soul.

There are two words which I have been dwelling upon during my random moments of reflection: satisfaction and fulfilment. Think for a moment and see if you can decide – can you have only one and not the other? Perhaps at some occasions you can have both? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

I find that I experience moments of satisfaction, but I always desire ongoing fulfilment. Events and circumstances can be momentarily satisfying, but if that is all they leave me longing for more. In stark contrast, normal life may be thrilling or mundane, but if it fits into the definition of fulfilling it brings me great comfort.

Life is more than fleeting satisfaction. Life is both one and the other.

I’m tired.

Sick and tired, to be precise.

Did nothing all day and it was a waste of time. By “nothing”, I mean a two-hour Uni seminar which was a waste of time, followed by a bunch of nothing and then a bunch more nothing. So much nothing!

Sure there were things in there, filling duties to others based on duties I’ve placed on myself, and some socialisation to try to spice up the mix. But I’m tired of pandering to social and subcultural norms. I feel bound by a subcultural expectation to behave a particular way, and I’m over it.

I am sick and tired of having to run my life in the direction of some perpetually elusive future. I am fed up with going towards something, or perhaps better put, having to decide that the present boredom or struggle is worth enduring because eventually I might realise that I’ve reached something better. I’m tired of having to go about daily life persuading myself to decide to make each moment interesting or joyful or meaningful purely because most of the moments are the dullest thing I could possibly imagine, only occasionally brightened by one seeming intrinsically good.

I have had enough with slogging through study days and forcing myself to apply myself, only to collapse into bed at some unearthly hour due to my screwed up body clock. I’m tired of the limitations of working two days a week and studying full time – sixteen paid hours in a week which requires about 60 hours of productivity, plus costs.

I’m so sick and tired I start to wonder dark and macabre things. Nobody would even have a clue that so much thickly swirls just underneath, so close to breaking the surface. I confront a void of black impossibility and question why it’s impossible that I should consider venturing out past the point of no return. Driving home tonight, within the space of 3 seconds, I can recall 8 such confrontations, each of them lightning fast, distinctly separate and grossly morbid.

But we can’t have that, can we? Everything has to be rosy, all the time, whenever anybody asks, because it should be. What could possibly be wrong? How could Mr Optimist be suffering such turmoil? He’s just him, they say with a smile, and previously I would have grinned widely, agreed wholeheartedly, and set my mind on pumping up my own opinion of the next thing I have to do. No longer.

Sick and tired. So over it. I want out. Let me out!

When I visited the local lookout described in the previous post, I was experiencing no pleasant solitude. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant place, and the memory of the cool air, the still quiet and the twinkling lights is far more comforting now than it was then. My emotions that day tended to push me further and further towards the irrational. I knew it before, but I experience it now: they can also pull one closer and closer to being in balance.

I am reassured just now that it can be possible to feel urgency and serenity at the same time. For right at this moment, holding on to nothing more vital than life itself, I feel both urgency and serenity, and the two are not at odds.

Now, I am keenly aware that I have proffered some rampant emotionlessness of late. But I think the pendulum swings both ways, and I am glad of it.

I should both seek and cherish serenity, and this at any moment: now.

Yesterday’s struggle wasn’t enough. It was useful to air a view but I don’t feel there was much resolution.  Perhaps tonight’s will have certain differences.

I railed against the struggle in the last 24 hours. I went out tonight and got some form of rest and relaxation, but it wasn’t fulfilling – it left me empty. I went to a lookout and surveyed the sleeping city’s flickering lights, but the clear sky and crisp air only served to emphasise my solitude. I was in two minds, then four, then none.

The feeling of emptiness is bizarre given how full my life really is. Ironically, it is full of certain things which don’t fill. And certain things which drain. The key point is that I need to do everything I can to avoid the drains. (For the record, I will state that one of those drains is caused by financial concerns – money.)

But I am alive, and the very life within me wills me to live. So I must live. If I am to really live, I must do so to the fullest extent possible. To do so I will choose to take delight in small pleasures and momentary joys. The fleeting can thereby become a motivation during the mundane.

Life is the certain difference.