What's next?

What comes next?

That question keeps rolling to the forefront of my brain.  The reason for it is different in changing scenarios.  But what I ponder, over and over, is the same question.

I feel confused.  But I’m not confused.  That implies that there are various ideas in my head and they are mixed, jumbled amongst each other until I can’t tell one from the other.  Then I am “confused” as I try to sort out the various opportunities at my doorstep.

But I’m not confused.  There is no argument in my head about which from a roster of options I am going to choose.  I just don’t have any ideas.  Where there should be a wealth of imagination for me to draw from about what success to go chase down next, there is none.  I stare out into the future and the whole horizon is a bleak, unbroken line of nothingness.

So what does come next?

I know I want something.  And to my discredit I keep making asinine, stupid choices, pursuing goals that aren’t mine but seem like they should be, based on some arbitrary vision of what someone in my position “should” want. 

I don’t really know what I want.  It wasn’t so long ago I had a clear, passionate vision of what I wanted to accomplish.  I knew that to achieve a purpose, I had to buckle down and really apply myself to get better fitness and an improved body.  Well that worked fabulously and I got what I was after.  But now that I’m here, pursuing yet another ten pound loss seems arbitrary and ill-conceived.  It might be accomplished but would it advance my real goal?  Based on evidence it seems likely that would accrue me little to no benefit.

Then what should I pursue?  When I got to my weight goal I looked for something new to bend to my unbreakable will.  So I thought I needed to improve my mind.  And on that goal I pursued with heedless passion.  Now 13,000 pages later, I find myself bored with this goal, and frankly nowhere near the sharpness I thought would accumulate as I poured knowledge into my brain.  Am I quicker in thought, and more full with ideas?  Of this there is no doubt.  But my quantum improvement remains elusive and I now get bored.

What the hell should I do?

Now I am brought here, and I find myself lost.  I improved my body, but now it will not grow strong as fast.  I built up my mind, and now it sniffs at my puny attempts to feed it.  My daily pursuits are not a challenge anymore, just maintenance that I do to keep up the status quo.  Where is the salvation that will remake my soul?

My thoughts turn to those of romance, of love.  Could this be the salvation that will remake the emptiness in my heart?  But this is not something that can be quarried with a daily plan and limitless energy.  On this topic I have always failed.

Why?

If I knew the answer to this one, three-letter question then I probably wouldn’t have to ask it.  In the final analysis it’s probably as easy to boil down as to say I have no confidence.  If you do not believe you are lovable, then you will not be loved.  How I arrived at this conclusion inside me is a story too long in the making to recount in one short essay.

What taunts me is that all signs to the possibility that I am lovable.  Even loved.  But I won’t accept it.  So I fling myself at stupidity, rather than try to encourage tender thoughts that might surround me. 

You stand out there on the periphery of my swirling maelstrom.  I want to own you, but that’s probably why I can’t have you.  You are not to be owned.  Yet I want to be in that space next to you.  It tortures me that I can think of no way to get you to invite me in.  So you stand over there, quiet and undisturbed by my flailing typhoon of emtion.  I remain engulfed in a swirling hurricane, all passion and desire, but none of which even touches you, as it buffets me with crushing winds.

So what is next?

I stand here hoping that the inspiration I need comes soon.  I feel winds shearing me from the goal.  Even I don’t think of something, all could be lost.  But I don’t know what comes next.