Loud silence

One thing I am not accustomed to - keeping my focus on the positive.

While we like to cling to the idea that the wake of the boat is driving us forward (that is, the evidence of our journey and not the motor propelling us forward) the plain fact is, once you recognize a pattern that is detrimental, you can act against it (or, better yet, just act some other way - get resistance out of your thoughts).  In most cases, the average person will continue in the same self-defeating behavior because, gosh darnit, "the past" and what-not.  I certainly have embodied this, and in many ways still do.

There is nothing keeping me from doing better, other than laziness/habit/being too deep in my head.

I do have one question, though.

How does one sow a joie de vivre?

It's an essential foundation to doing the right thing.  I am, like that unfortunate Fisher King, 'sick with experience.'  The joys in my life are brief and fleeting.  I have my successes and failures like anyone.  I certainly cannot complain that I have a roof over my head, am well-fed (far too well fed), have enough money to feed the kids, have a loving wife.  I've had wonderful travel experiences, I have fairly good health (although I have certainly abused my body in recent years).

My friend count is low, as I have about a 10:1 loss to gain ratio there.  I keep people away as I have taught myself to trust very few.  This is a mistake of ego, of course.  But it is what it is right now.

Very little excites me nowadays.  The routine I am locked into (by my financial and familial obligations) holds no mystery for me.  Nothing new is learned from it.  Whenever I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back upon it because it is insignificant.

The routine needs to change, and not by focusing on the negatives.  All energy needs to be directed toward the desired result.  Negative begets negative.  Being angry with the current conditions doesn't make them better, make them go away, or make your reality improve.  Expressing constant anger, passive-aggressive distaste for those not holding you aloft, or even the "well I don't care" bullshit admissions that only vocalize because you DO care - all of these self-aggrandizing tactics just make people, who once cared, go away.

I write because I want people to like me, to validate me.  Eventually to finance me.  But one can't market to friends, who figure they've paid enough by giving you verbal support.  They think buying from you is somehow just giving you money.  The sales that matter are the strangers, those people with no obligation to you, who part with their money because they want a piece of your human contribution.

But that joie-de-vivre lack... or the stifling of it somewhere along the line... that's what seems to have a stranglehold on my creative voice.

I'm focusing on positives because that's where the voice must be.  If you go looking for brown, you certainly can find it.  I have enough rods-and-cones on my retina to see as many hues as I can imagine.  Somewhere along the path, I hope a fundamental joy implants itself, because it's slow-going until then.