An aspiring writer's tiny existence in New York City while chasing a dream, and hoping that somehow this crazy, random thing called "life" all works out.
For sending inspiration and/or fanmail, please use: scottkurttila@hotmail.com
Oddly, I'm extremely tired today from out of nowhere except from working at my regular job from about 8:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. I then went shopping to REI to get some biking equipment - inner tubes, lights and a lock, in preparation for my upcoming cross-country biking odyssey from West to East, finishing in Key West, Florida.
One thing to note for today is that I started reading "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz and it's an incredible piece of work that I highly recommend. The book's truthful simplicity is astounding regarding self-limiting beliefs that we continually garner throughout life from early childhood to every day opinions that everyone around us, including ourselves, place upon each individual.
I pondered the wisdom garnered from today's reading and oddly, in a strange twist of synchronicity, found this quote which hit the mental baseball out of the park for me:
"Any life is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is."
-Jorge Luis Borges
So who am I? Have you ever sat down and asked yourself that? At the moment I am asking myself this very question and to tell you the truth, I really have no clue who I am. But I'm here and I'm giving it my best shot.
Deep thoughts aside, I had fun today regardless of the amount of time I spent working simply knowing that my "inbox" is now at zero emails after being over two weeks behind as of Monday this week. Now, my mind feels much more free to work at a regular pace and enjoy the pursuits of life outside the office, especially writing. My girlfriend, LoLo emailed me that "Project Greenlight" run by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck is now in round two in its search for a screenplay to produce. I've decided it's time to continue working on the screenplay about my dog's life in order to make the submission deadline. Yea, I'll throw anything I write at anyone who leaves an open door for submissions like this.
Author bravado aside, I also enjoyed shopping at REI and looking at things such as panniers and single person tents as my dream of biking across the country takes shape. Currently and highly subject to change, the plan is to bike solo, with my dog being pulled behind me in a kiddie trailer. It's a fourteen year old dream that has yet to happen, so I've decided to just buck up and go, regardless of the financial and career implications it might lead to. I read a great quote yesterday in "The Happy Isles of Oceana" by Paul Theroux:
"Tourists do not know where they've been, I thought. Travelers do not know where they are going."
This line spoke to me in a way that only solidified the thought that when taking risks to have adventures and experiences that we don't always need to know the outcome. Sometimes it's okay to just go and whatever happens, happens.
According to Richard Stine in "The World Of Richard Stine" "We are where are, doing what we ought to be doing, otherwise we would somewhere else, doing something else." I took this to mean that if we really aren't where we want to be, we can simply choose to be somewhere else, doing something else. Otherwise, it's simply our choice to remain where we are, be that a conscious or subconcious choice we've each made.
I've spent the past year thinking very hard about what I really want to be doing with the time I have left. According to an estimate, I've been alive for about 1,943 weeks or so. Setting aside an early demise, this means I've got about that many weeks to go see and do everything I long to in the next 326,424 hours of average life span remaining. Tomorrow this morbid number will be down to 326,400. And if I sleep 8 hours per night, I've really only got about 218,704 hours of relative consciousness. Add in eating, showering, laundry, junk mail sorting, dusting, vacuuming and the like and my productive goal reaching hours diminish considerably.
So, I'd love to put down more here, but I've got some pressing issues to take care of. I believe after yesterday's post below, there are a few more windows to wash and some goals to see more clearly. Only now I'm racing against the clock like a game show contestant trying to choose between Door #1, 2 or 3 before the buzzer. So don't change the channel, because I'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, Timex.
1a. Write what you see: This exercise is about picking an object out of the room and writing about it without using adjectives.
My loft possesses seven windows along the western wall. They begin at two feet, two and one quarter inches off the floor and they reach upward to seven feet, 8 inches high. Each one is four feet and four inches wide, containing 9 rectangles of glass. Dirt from the elevated highway outside coats each pain with a thin film. The dirt adds a gray filter to everything I see when I look out into the world moving about outside this fish tank of mine. The dirt is like the cynicism that thinly coats my view of life which dampens the colors and hues of sailboats, sunsets and shimmering water. The cynicism has slowly built up from years of failure. I've failed at life for the most part, from love to sports to business to friendships, yet like the clear glass I can still see through, my optimism prevails undyingly as I wake each morning to a new day and another chance.
My list of goals sits waiting for me to wash away the dark cynicism so that I can clearly see the potential that life holds. I rise from my desk, fill a plastic bucket with water and windex and I begin to squeegee away the dirt. The evening sunset shines through the clean glass like a burning hope for success in some form. I am reminded that we can simply change our attitude as easily as washing a window by removing reminders of past failures in life as easily as we can squeegee a window pane. There are exactly 71 panes in my windows including the ones on the south side of my space. Two windows contain some larger panes on the bottom instead of the separate smaller ones which were somehow broken and replaced. For the past four years, I have not cleaned the outside of these windows nor have I reached several goals in life. I will now clean a window each day that I am home and I will clean my view of a goal and see it with new eyes in order to pursue it. I hope to have 71 things accomplished when I am done.
With that, I now challenge you to think of a past experience which limits you in some way. I challenge you to wash a window in your life clean then see the world with all of it's brightness. I challenge you to try again toward reaching a goal with a fresh perspective and a clear vision toward something you used to talk yourself out of based on a bad past experience.
Think of it as "Windex for the soul."