My last post was inspired by the book called “Fifty Five Fiction” where writers submit short fiction pieces containing only fifty five words. What I liked most about my favorite stories in the book was their ability to express a simple yet profound story that gave the reader enough bone structure to build a beautiful face. My own stories, I admit, are a facsimile of a fax of a sham compared to the truly divine ones in “Fifty Five Fiction”.

Regardless of what my feeble attempts are lacking, the idea of shaving an idea so clean of excess appealed to me and worked its way into my subconscious enough to become a running theme throughout the past three weeks.

The first manifestation of this new theme erupted in my frenzied cleaning session last week. After changing and washing my sheets, doing two loads of laundry (including FOLDING), vacuuming the carpet, doing the dishes, and organizing my papers; the surface of my life was considerably lacking in excess.

What I suspected to be true and what subsequently came true was the lingering sense of dissatisfaction at my contrasting inner mess and outer cleanliness. My head was turned around and dizzy from some seriously imaginated spinning. And I know exactly why this was.

My to-do list had become out of hand and had pushed me out of sanity straight into deprived madness. I couldn’t (and honestly still can’t) see the difference between what other people wanted me to do and what I myself wanted to do. The philosophy of “if I don’t really have an objection to doing something, and this person really wants me to do it, why shouldn’t I?” made my priorities confusing and blurry. I probably didn’t even have any.

Even blogging, something that was once my secret joy and space to be myself, became less of a expressive and creative outlet and more of a place to be dreaded. I talked to people about wonderful projects and they expected me to write about it in my one of my blogs. Then, more because of my own inner dysfunctions, blogging became like a dreaded homework assignment; something I’ve never felt about it before. It got soured because I let other people’s expectations build up and instead of facing them, I hid under cybercomforters and employed evasion 2.0.

Finally one night I snapped. I received a disgruntled email from my good friend, wanting me to work on a project we had talked about a month or so ago, and I just let my fingers free of the self inflicted paralysis.

In response to his email, he got this:

“Your email is honestly not going to influence me or my to do list. Those things are still on my map, but the time just isn’t right for that as of now. I over extend myself and I mess with my own head as far as people wanting me to do things and my own responsibilities to stay sane.

I really want to get my own life under control and try to enjoy the last year I have in Hawaii with my friends and family. It’s nothing personal that I haven’t gotten my end of the project out yet. I value your friendship highly. I want you to know that.

And right now it’s Monday night (11:00 pm), and I’m sitting in the coffee shop desperately trying to finish a French paper about French philosophy and I want to bang my head against the wall because my future depends on what happens in the next couple of months. My mom is out of town, and my step dad is working long hours, so I live in between my house on the other side of the island and my dad’s house in the city (which is where I’m staying tonight, and where I have to sleep on an air mattress). I have a ton work stuff to do. And I have the usual load of screwed up personal problems to deal with.

Ugh, sorry. I needed to do that. So I’m really not upset at all about you having a problem with the way I run my life. I’m still trying to figure everything out. I’m trying to figure out who I am. I’m trying to manage my priorities and responsibilities and take care of my mental health.

Seriously, I’m so happy you’re my friend. Let’s keep it that way and respect each other, and know that we really don’t know shit about what goes on in each of our respective lives.”

Yeah, so he probably didn’t deserve that. I don’t regret sending the email, though. I was honest and like I said in the email, I needed to do that.

It’s true that I don’t know who I am still. I know what I love to do NOW, but that usually changes in a month or so. You can tell that by my blog; my head is confusing and transient. Sometimes I’d like to wipe the slate clean, and start over with a more singularly focused resolved. I especially feel that way about my blog.

But thinking about it now, this confusing, distracted, sometimes beautiful, sometimes hard to look at thing is what I’ve released into the world the past couple years. I’ve always made it clear that I write in this blog because I want to, not for comments, for readers, or for anyone else’s agenda. I forgot that. I forgot that I can do what I want to do, and that I can express myself in ways that I feel fit, or more importantly, WHEN I feel fit. There’s no deadline on expression.

These past few months I’ve been sneakily crawling back down into the dark cave, mesmerized by the puppet’s shadows on the walls. I never understood why the scenery and light was changing until now. Plato’s cave appeared in front of my previously clouded eyes. Do I see the way out? Yeah, I think I can. It’s a familiar path.

So what I love most about those Fifty Five Fiction short stories was their ability to cut people’s expectations of “short stories” out and cut away the excess words that no one really needed to hear to make the story great. The story was great bare boned and unique, standing alone on its own.

Maybe if I can stop obfuscating myself into a safe, untouchable oblivion, and face my own wants and priorities in life without a paralyzing guilt, I’ll be able to turn the soured spaces in my life back into the personal joys they once were.