Maybe it’s the artist in me, I’m not sure — but most things have a 2 year expiration date with me. I lose passion and interest and drive after two years. This is all referring to work and jobs and passion projects. Things — just become a chore or annoying even. But the hard part about living life in a 2 year passionate drive cycle is that I wrap so much of my value and my identity into those things when I do do them and then when that spirit just leaves me, like it always does, I feel lost. So lost. And then I find something new to do, to dive head first into. And I envelope myself in it, I become it (god I would have made a good actor I think). Because I do have a need to shape shift. It’s just who I am. And I want that to be a positive thing, I don’t mean I’m changing to meet what others need. I change to meet my ever changing personality and self-awareness and need and artistic spirit.

 

I did that with the military, although an enlistment of 6 years will drive you to stay longer than 2 years. But after my first year of indoctrination (student
flight, basic training and technical school) I spent the next two years rising to the top of my job in the way that I could, in what I could control. In that way – I became Airman of the Year within 2 years of working full time.  I got the position everyone wanted. And that was it. Everything fell apart after that.

 

It’s like I’m an extended string on a spool, and when I start something I wrap and wrap and wrap myself all the way in, as tight as I can be, as good as I can be and then I find a point and reach it where it feels FINISHED, complete – completely spooled. It feels like I achieved something. And then the tension finally snaps, the piece that was holding me to my goal — disappears, the spool reverses it’s spin and I unravel completely till I am completely released of my tether and I am just an unraveled string, a mess of a thing.

And I move on. I finished my bachelors in 2 years of full time school. and I moved on.

And for the last two years “officially” I have taken my messy self and straightening it out, aligning it with a business structure, learning a new tight rope to walk, making others look at “what I can do.” Creating work with meaning for others, watching myself become an artist of new medium. Watching a little nod of approval happen with important entities in the industry. Celebrating popularity contests on Instagram and Best of Lawrence roll in. And then the tension broke. My heart sank – and it left me again. It’s like having the air fill your lungs for two years and then finally you fall hard on your back onto the ground and you lose all your air at once.

That’s where I’m at.