This is future me here. I’ve done some touching up of this post because there were some grammatical errors throughout the post. I mean, I wrote it at 3am around a week ago, so I’m not surprised I found some errors. I’ve kept the message intact while changing the least I could for the corrections I needed. I hope you enjoy this post and it gives you something of value. Thank You!
I’m sitting in my family apartment at 3am at the time of writing this post reflecting on the people I’ve met got the closest to throughout my first few years of adulthood, and I’m kinda just laughing to myself inside my head. Everyone that I got close with usually had a way of pulling me away from the miasma of my thoughts in their own ways. My roommate throughout all of college found a way to see through all my walls and barriers to find me and I love him to death for that. If a world existed where I never met him, I could confidently say my life would be ten times worse. People have a way of changing us like that. I know I’ve changed his life forever in ways he never imagined either. Sometimes you just meet people like that in life and looking back, there are plenty of people who have drifted away that I wish hadn’t.
This isn’t meant to be one of those anonymous apology posts. Nor is it meant to be a way for me to vent any lingering grief from friendships that fell apart for one reason or another. To be honest, I just want to write about something. So, here I am. I wonder, if I could see the threads that bind me to others, what colors would tether me to the various people in my life both past and present. My gut instincts tell me there would be a lot of wildfire reds and oranges from where I cut people off, but I doubt that’s the case. I bet there would be a lot of gray threads of indifference or even nonchalance. Sure, there would be many green threads tying me to various places because I’ve made a positive difference in a lot of people’s lives. Then, there would be many threads that I never met and changed their lives too. However, I believe many of these threads would touch people who have disappeared from my life in one way or another.
There is an alternative side of this equation that I don’t talk about much, but those would be the people who are no longer within my life who changed it for better or for worse. I think the people I miss the most are people who I considered rivals in one form or another. I often think back to the people in my life that forced me to step up my efforts whether in school or in hobbies with a fondness I don’t reserve for anyone else. Whether they were people I went to elementary school with or sat in lectures with, I always found people in school that forced me to try harder and push myself. Otherwise, I’d become complacent with doing better than as many people as I could within my setting, which wasn’t difficult in most classes. A lot of times in classes, especially in high school, I’d get bored during challenge activities because they’d be too easy until someone started to pick up the pace. In college, my competitive yearning fizzled out for a while until my sophomore year when a friend of mine reignited my spark by challenging me to step outside my comfort zone in numerous ways.
I wish I could enumerate all the ways she changed my writing, but I’d be here all day and I’m kinda hoping to get some sleep tonight should my body allow it. (Plus, chronicling how such a tornado whipped around my life and changed me for the better before I cast her away for a while would take too long. That belongs written in a memoir after I become famous someday). Essentially, this close friend of mine made a huge difference in my writing skills by just being around to challenge the way I approached things I wrote and still continues to do so in some capacity to this day. That’s the summarized glossary entry for this person’s impact on my life.
Needless to say, I found new ways to push myself and be the best writer I could make myself. Even then, I still don’t think I pushed hard enough. Just this past year, I wrote thirty poems in April. One a day for thirty days straight. Next year, I’ll figure out a way to make each poem unique enough to break conventions because my poems usually follow a conventional pattern. Still, each person I met afterward pushed me further and further, but I find myself in that same place of yearning. However, this longing is not quite for an individual, not in full. Instead, I believe I search for something that forces me to redefine my strategies and learn new tools. For example, I’m currently in a transitory period in my career where I might be changing locations, and I’m enjoying the newness of this whole experience. I yearn to travel around the world to drink up the vastness of the human experience or at least as much as I can. That’s a tall order for anyone, let alone a college graduate working at an hourly rate.
However, when I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like to be a bird flying freely to go and do anything I’d like, I can’t help myself but get excited. Electricity courses through my body, and I feel alive in a way I can only describe as pure bliss. A warmth rises in my chest and circulates through my body in a way that forces the deepest parts of the body to jolt awake. I’m wondering when I’ll find my next galvanizing fork so to speak, but I know whoever or whatever it is will push me well beyond my current means. I only hope I’ll be ready to fly alongside this person when the time comes.
They say birds of a feather flock together, and I’ve found parts of my flock already, but I’m missing a crucial step. I’ve lost sight of my competition and I’m getting stagnant. So, may this tessellation be shattered into a million pieces and a mosaic of sublime beauty greet me in the next chapter in whatever form it may take.
If you’ve reached this far in my post, you clearly enjoy my writing style. I’m looking forward to seeing some of you back for the next updates. Until then, have a great rest of your day wherever you are in the world! May sunlight illuminate thy path forward!
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