How did I get here?

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Saturday 21st November 2020, 14:00

I woke today wondering how I got to this point in life.

Like really.

I’m no stranger to self reflection but damn.

Some of the biggest personal questions you ask yourself at each life checkpoint were glossed over.

I can’t even sit here at my desk and wonder how I got to this point where I’m documenting a running theme into my digital journal.

It’s been the theme of the past few weeks but this time there’s a twist.

I’m actually questioning whether I want any of what I’ve been chasing these past 20 years.

Did I really want to be an artist, was that really my destiny or did I get led a stray by preconceived notions on what I felt I should be based on the limited representations I knew about?

I pursued sport in the early days as every child does but I’m not sure when I loss all interest.

I did a bit of art but weren’t really good or drew to the standards.

I didn’t really experience having a void to fill I kinda just fell into music because of the camaraderie that I saw.

I kinda followed my brother into it because it seemed to be fun.

I really like the way how music made me feel.

I listened to rap but didn’t care about the lyrics in my younger days, I was more into the beats and how they made my imagination run wild.

Music captured my imagination and hence became the catalyst of me becoming obsessed with it which then became my aspiration in life.

Honestly I was addicted.

All my friendships became centred around music in some way.

It got to a point where if I weren’t DJing or MCing with you, I didn’t really see the point of hanging around you.

I became trapped in my own echo chamber.

You can imagine that when disputes, disagreements and differences of opinions take place you kinda drift apart from people because your connections weren’t built on solid foundations like most people but business in some degree.

I wake up and look at my life now not with regret or anything but feeling like I’ve really been on reclusive autopilot tunnel vision for the best part of 14 years.

I’ve journeyed so far and deep into the centre of myself that I no longer know the difference between connection and detachment.

I’m so far removed from societal norms around personal interactions and relations that I’m questioning everything.

I really don’t know what normal is because I tend to see everything in third person as if I sit in the observation box of a stadium seeing things unfold.

I’m not conscious of the present, it’s always a few or several steps ahead. I can’t really compute anything outside of what I observe as I feel like I hear what is being said in context to the larger picture and if its transparent enough for me to see exactly what it is, I find it hard to convince myself to go against my better judgement to partake in stuff that isn’t compatible with me.

It often takes me longer than average to digest or understand something because I work with so many variables in order to come to a decision.

So in regards to the original question which is how did I end up here?

The answer is something I’ve always known.

My life has been one big ‘all your eggs in one basket’ where I’ve been biding my time until something pops off but it’s been relatively inactive for 16yrs and nothing has really popped off, so I find myself fantasising about winning the lottery and just making it through the days until something pops off and I can live better.

That is a self destructive mindset.

I realise that.

I know that.

I’ve identified through a frustrating thought process that a first step to freedom is to take control of my personal finances.

Today I realised that doing things until something has popped off is what has got me to a place where it feels as if I’ve fallen asleep on the train and woke up in a strange place that I don’t recognise.

It’s actually nuts.

Whilst writing this I took time out to get my hair re-twisted by my partner where I chose to watch a FIFA documentary roundup of Russia 2018.

I came across a quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky which reads:

Dreams seem to be induced not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what clever tricks my reason has sometimes played on me in dreams!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’ve had this running theme going through my self reflections which centre around having a purpose in life.

Every so often I’ll drift inwards and begin to examine myself in an attempt to figure out what mine is and whether I have one.

It often leaves me in a state of paralysis where I’m unable and uninspired to do anything because I realised that I’m so far removed from what it may be that I don’t even recognise what it is anymore.

Am I in purgatory; between a reality that I don’t quite fit into and my never ending desire for more than the prospect of what life actually is?

I dedicated an unhealthy amount of my life and mind to following the divining rod of creativity often at the expense of experiencing life in the present and forming connections.

If this were the matrix when Neo finds himself plugged into the incubator in a row of several infinite columns and rows, I just happen to be the one with the dodgy connector.

Sometimes I feel like I belong and other times I just feel inadequate and out of place despite how much I’ve tried to roll with it.

I’ve always felt a dissonance, you know a disharmony where I find comfort through journeying inwards and visualising my personal heaven inside.

There’s many things that I do just to get by

I keep telling myself that it’s in order to bide time

Until I figure out what I want to do and my true purpose in life

I can’t seem to find my way back to the life outside

How can I live the vision in the world with everyone else on the outside of my mind?

The day I concede to the average adult life is the day my vision dies inside.

Not only am I trying to escape the acceptance of a mundane and dormant life but the prison cell I’ve built for myself deep inside.