Have you ever had those days when you're not sure where you are? More importantly, what you are or why you are? Those simple, basic questions of humanity; the gentle eggs of neurosis, doubt, and uncertainty. It could go without saying that I've been having some of those days- except I don't think that I have.
There was a time in my life where I had a conceptualization of who I was and where I wanted to be. Coordinates plus vector equaled progress and development. Like a grunt behind enemy lines, navigating obstacles but always keeping my direction and sense of location no matter how wild the terrain.
That conepctualization was lost when the structure of my identity largely unravelled. I found that my destination coordinates were lost and that my map was a forgery. Which leaves me here. I'm not lost; I know exactly where I am. I'm just uncertain about how it fits into the larger context.
My entire life was on a vector for comic books. I had a one year plan, a three year plan, a ten year plan. Now I'm standing in the crater of a land that used to be self-image, and the flora and fauna that have grown in the ruins of my former self seem more interesting than the destinations I was working towards. Instead of being as far as I could think, my vector has become limited to as far as I can reach; just far enough to feel the fibers of a flower.
For all of my life, my totem animal has been the Armadillo, a creature best known for its defenses. The armor is essentially about the delineation between self and environment, the process of learning when to be protectively distant and when to expose the soft furry underbelly. Armadillo still has things to teach me, but I'm at an impasse that he's not well suited for.
So now I find myself in the arms of my new totem. My life is different.
There was a time in my life where I had a conceptualization of who I was and where I wanted to be. Coordinates plus vector equaled progress and development. Like a grunt behind enemy lines, navigating obstacles but always keeping my direction and sense of location no matter how wild the terrain.
That conepctualization was lost when the structure of my identity largely unravelled. I found that my destination coordinates were lost and that my map was a forgery. Which leaves me here. I'm not lost; I know exactly where I am. I'm just uncertain about how it fits into the larger context.
My entire life was on a vector for comic books. I had a one year plan, a three year plan, a ten year plan. Now I'm standing in the crater of a land that used to be self-image, and the flora and fauna that have grown in the ruins of my former self seem more interesting than the destinations I was working towards. Instead of being as far as I could think, my vector has become limited to as far as I can reach; just far enough to feel the fibers of a flower.
For all of my life, my totem animal has been the Armadillo, a creature best known for its defenses. The armor is essentially about the delineation between self and environment, the process of learning when to be protectively distant and when to expose the soft furry underbelly. Armadillo still has things to teach me, but I'm at an impasse that he's not well suited for.
So now I find myself in the arms of my new totem. My life is different.