Monday, January 30, 2006

So!

I'm back, and it's a new year - hell, almost a new month in that new year, where does the time go? - and it's time for a little reformatting. See, I'm not really happy with the direction this blog started to take, and that's a lot of the reason why I stayed away from it for so long. I spent too much time bitching (I'm turning into a helluva curmudgeon, by the look of some of my posts) and too little time actually saying anything worthwhile. When I was thinking about finally getting around to putting some of my thoughts about God and religion down on paper (so to speak), I was too busy making small talk. When I was thinking about sharing my impressions of movies that I'd seen or books that I'd read recently, I was too busy grousing about the government's "response" to Katrina. When I wanted to reminisce about moments or eras in my life, instead I'd wander in here and type out yet another bank menu. And so on. I complain and make small talk enough in meatspace, I don't need to be doing it on my blog all the time as well.

It's my own fault, of course - sometimes I get so involved in tangents that I end up losing sight of the actual path. Not just here in blogworld, either. I do it at work. I do it in relationships. I do it around the house. I do it with books I'm reading - start six of them at once and end up somehow not finishing any of them, you know? When I was young and used to get involved in eleventy-three things at the same time, my parents always wrote it off by saying "oh, he's just really smart, his mind needs to stay really active." Which may be the case to a certain extent, but it's also true that I have focus issues. A lot of the things that I want and *need* to do end up undone, or half-done, because I just sort of get distracted and wander away from them. "Oh, look! Sparkly thing!"

And you know, it really sucks to habitually lack focus. I've shorted myself in a lot of ways over the years because of it. Lost a couple of women that I truly loved. Walked away from a couple of jobs that could have led somewhere much bigger than where I am today. Let myself get distracted in college when I had everything going my way and a free ride to boot. Fell away from friendships with some really terrific people. The list, did I feel like sharing it in its entirety with the world, would probably be a pretty long one.

Well, enough of that shit. Sure, I could listen to all the old chestnuts about how "experience is the best teacher" and "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "everything happens for a reason," and maybe I could even convince myself that I believe them. But the more meaningful chestnut to me at this stage of my life is "you're not getting any younger." It's high time I started really taking that seriously.

(Of course, the thing about having a lack of focus and being smart enough to realize it is that by the time you're in your mid-thirties, you've probably also said all of this before but then failed to live up to your "commitment" to changing things. I guess there's room for one last chestnut - time will tell.)