The Languishing of the Warrior Bard

Yeah, I know. It's been a while. 

My last blog post was November 28, 2021. Unbelievable. 

My last Facebook post was January 15 of this year.

And Twitter has long been dead to me.

I have been quiet. 

The blog as a medium is admittedly, sadly, an obsolete and antiquated form of communication. But that's why I like it and want to continue to use it: I, too, am obsolete and antiquated. So, this is not the end that comes with a whimper. You can have my blog when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Briefly, I will explain (feebly) how my lifestyle has been too oppressive to allow time to write even something as simple as this. 

For over two years now, I have been in an exceptionally hard season of life. Excessive challenges of my work and home life have created something of a personal nightmare of time management and energy demands. I don't even know if that sentence makes sense, and it's not a humblebrag, "Ohh, I'm so busy, I have so much going on..." No, it's different. They say time heals all wounds, but in fact it can make them worse. The vilest weeds take root and are much harder to kill later on if they go unchecked. 

Not to embarrass myself or my wife, I will say that there are challenges our family faces that others couldn't understand. But we have been learning, slowly, how to navigate treacherous waters and reframe the way we approach these problems. (Actually, it was mostly her learning everything and breaking it down into bite-size morsels for me to try keep up with her). PTSD, chronic anxiety, chronic exhaustion, those are the pieces of the picture that I am not hesitant to mention. Our firstborn is also in therapy, which probably I should be going to myself soon. The rest, I don't want to go into. But it eats up a lot of time. 

Then there's my job. That saga is better left to another blog post, or better yet, no blog post at all. I give them enough of my time and energy as it is--I don't want to waste my scant, precious free time telling you all about it, just in the name of understanding and validation. Nah. They demand too much of me, but I haven't been able to find a way out. I have been looking at a career change in community service, but no one there seems to want me anyway. I've had a couple of job interviews that got my hopes up, but lo and behold, the status quo remains. I don't know what I am going to do, but I know I need to build more skillsets somehow. It shouldn't be this hard to get out of an abusive situation. 

My 20s are long gone, though I routinely reminisce about the various seasons of that decade, if only for wistful comfort sometimes. Sometimes, though, even the happy memories lead me to dine on ashes, wishing I could Quantum Leap into myself to "put right" the things that went wrong. That's an unhealthy pastime. 

But my 20s, as turbulent and unpredictable as they were, certainly made for an... adventurous time. That's kind of the point of your 20s, though, isn't it? Variety and open-ended exploration as you define yourself. Find your way. 

My 30s were largely spent in a series of crises, as most people know. Stressful situations that most people in their 30s don't have to deal with. I had to put life on hold, as they say. And I came out of the proverbial storm shelter to find that the cloud was only over my house, that everyone else had carried on with their lives without me. 

My 30s felt like a lost decade where I was unable to do what other people do: establish themselves, build themselves up, build a life. 

But they say that life is what happens while you are waiting for your dreams to be realized. 

They also say that comparison is the thief of joy.

I turn 42 next month. I told my wife, "I don't want to wake up when I am 50 and realize that I squandered my 40s trying to relive my 30s. I want to savor my 40s, this walk of life, when I can focus on enjoying watching my kids grow up, focus on enjoying this rustic, country sanctuary that we are trying to cultivate." 

And I meant it. Of course, I do need a better job, a less toxic one. But I appreciate what I do have at home, even though I am robbed of more time to live in it. The house is a mess of an unfinished fixer-upper, but it's a diamond in the rough. The rustic-dream-home potential is there, and not as far off as I think it is sometimes. And my kids are so cute, and they aren't going to be this little for long. 

I don't have a theme here. I just wanted to break the silence. 

I still feel far off from making my comeback, but there's a rare feeling that I look forward to having again. That ennobling, thrilling rush when on the horizon of the Fields of the Pelennor, while the white city is under siege, the pendulum swings the other way as reinforcements line up at the hillcrest. 

If you've seen The Avengers: Endgame, the moment I am striving towards is that cathartic release when Thor returns from his own season of languishing. He appears in the middle of the huge battle, in a blazing, rediscovered glory, and the main fanfare explodes as he knocks down waves of foes and shouts as he leaps into the air, "Bring--Me--Thanos!!" And your scalp tingles as you jump out of your seat to cheer. You are cheering for Thor, but you are really cheering for yourself; the reason the superhero genre exists in the first place is because we use those characters as ideals and allegories for our own personal struggles. 

It's a ways off still. I'm in an earlier chapter. 

And so, I have broken the ice of this long silence, with nothing to say. I thus deliver you from the shackles of expectations that I was going to tell you something worthwhile, that I was going to regale you with a saga of cathartic return. 

Nope. This is life. It sucks right now, but I'm still around.