Life Unfolds

Life unfolds in mysterious ways, following paths we cannot conceive and revealing to us truths that were never known of ourselves. Such is the way of the world we live in, perpetually chaotic, ever changing, and we seek to control it.

I cannot rightly say I plan my time down to the minute, doing everything as I intend. Far from it. I set aside a week of my life to write a book and finished the actual first draft with a half a day to spare. I planned to spend only a day on the cover and the book trailer, and spent a day and a half at it. I planned to spend two days editing, and took the second day to format. The impossibilities at organising my time follow an inability to know what life will throw at me, difficulties in surviving an anti-social period of time, and trouble with the tools of my trade.

Yet, I survived that week, mostly unscathed, to release a book. (You can find out more about that here: http://paulcarrollwriter.com/balor/) This post is not about that book, because there will be so much about it to come in the next week. This post is not about my time on camera, mysterious myths, or the actual writing process.

This is, for all intents and purposes, about my inability to decide some of the most important factors of my life. I cannot decide who remains my friend, and I cannot stop those doubts plaguing my mind. I cannot decide when others are available to do anything. I cannot decide who I get to talk to and when. Life is too chaotic for this, and it remains to be seen how, outside of a day structured by an institution, I will ever find the means to maintain the relationships with those who matter to me.

Survival has thus far depended on the various institutions that govern my life and time, and an ability to let my own desires fall into place with those of others. This, I imagine, is how most relationships develop, when one person out of two can fit his or her time and desires around those of another. In the animal kingdom, those like me may be determined as part of the pack, while those who make the plans are the alpha males (or females). In a more social observation, I call it a means to an end, submitting to another's requests for the benefit of both parties.

Where does this leave me? In one instance, my attempts to formulate plans with another fail. In another, by submitting to another's availability, I ended up finding the means to do what I have wanted to do for some time now: I am to visit a haunted castle. This may kill me. We've been joking about it for some time.

However, it arose over a cup of tea over two months ago. This idea has developed into something wonderful, out of nothing, and it has become central to part of my life: when I will be able to fulfil a social desire.

I did not make these plans, just as I did not plan for a number of things over the past few months. Life, however, unfolds at random. The things we take for granted can tear away, while unexpected events can unravel before we realise they are happening. Every fold in life has the potential to be deeper than we imagine, hiding secrets from us, and it isn't until we realise that each life is connected, that each time one person's life unfolds, it is usually and often the result of another's decision.

There are no alpha males in this life. Order is often difficult to grasp, and more difficult to understand. Life is a chaos guiding us towards an un-knowable end, unfolding at a pace we can never determine. Keep going as you are, and let it unfold around you.

Full of the Right Ideas

"You can have a head full of the right ideas, but if you can't make the right moves in the world, they're worthless."

That line comes from The Education of Charlie Banks. This post isn't about it, but it's a great film. You should go watch it. I just thought: that's a really good mantra to live your life by. I know it certainly applies to a lot of the crap I managed to cause throughout my life. It's like, you think you know what's best, you think you have it all figured out, but really, really, when it comes down to acting on it you can't. You make the wrong decisions with all the right ideas.

It's too easy to ruin everything. It's far too easy to take your own life and the lives of others and set them alight like you're just living in some fictional world, like everything's a computer game, like the consequences don't matter and you don't have to believe what's happening, or you don't have to save so nothing you did matters. All the mistakes you make, you think you know what you're doing. I mean, most people my age have some experience with computer games, with getting something wrong in them and having the character die, but then coming back and thinking they know how to beat the Big Bad, only to die again. And in the games you can just retry it again and again and it doesn't matter. If you're like me, you figure out how to beat the Big Bad, but you don't know how you can do it. I was always better at telling That Guy I Am how to do it than do it myself.

So it's like the line - having the right ideas but not making the right moves. Except life isn't a game. We live in this messed up world where we can send a text or an email and a second later the person can have received it and then you deal with the consequences. You can bitch and you can moan and you can hit send and then it's too late, then you can't take it back. And I mean, it's easy to do something positive with texts and emails, but it's the wrong moves that come back and bite us in the ass.

I've made those mistakes too many times thinking I knew what was best. I made those mistakes because I didn't want to talk to somebody, I wanted to talk at somebody. You know those sort of relationships where one person does all the talking and it seems fine, except when the other person has something to say they can't because they don't know how that sort of thing works in the relationship? Like, you can't say something because it's not your job to say something when you're actually talking, and you can never find the right time to do it? And when you do say something, it's in an email or a text that's too long and convoluted to get the message across or it's too emotionally charged to make any constructive sense, and all it does is irritate?

Then the shorter messages come along and they can have the biggest impact because you didn't say something. You know you wanted to say something but you don't know how, so the person finally seeing those words instead of hearing them, instead of seeing you, gets the wrong impression.

And you say sorry, and it doesn't mean anything really, even if you mean it, because to the other person it's just one more apology and one more message - heard or seen - among the crap you created before. And there's this impression of you made - unforgivable, it seems - and no matter what you do you don't know how to fix it, because all your right ideas only led you to the point where your actions ruined everything until there are no more right ideas left, only the wrong ones, and you can't act anymore.

Relationships are very, very complicated and fragile things, sometimes. I want to convey that message in a way that will reach everyone, but I don't know how to do it except like this. I mean this in the most sincere way I can manage - don't mess up the relationships closest to you because you'll only hate yourself for it.

But - and I really have to say this - just because you think you've ruined something, don't assume it can't be put back together. You just have to find all the tie all the loose strings together again until you've got something that you looks remarkably similar to what you had before, even if you've had to replace some of the stuff you lost.

Best wishes,
Paul.