from the cold sunlight that's reflected off the moon

i wore a sweater & drank some hot tea this afternoon. i haven't felt this much "in my element" in a long time. this was also the first time in a LONG time that i had two days off in a row. i was actually productive! i feel like i *need* two days off, for my own. saturdays (even if they don't take place on an actual saturday) are for selfish endeavors. but it's sunday (irregardless if it actually is sunday) that is productive. that's the day you wake up feeling refreshed and on top of things.

Everyone's afraid of their own lives
If you could be anything you want
I bet you'd be disappointed, am I right? -mm

i am a procrastinator by nature (or probably more from nurture but whatev). and i've been terrible lately. most days i get off work at 5 with a notebook full of things to do burning in my pocket. but after i make dinner and sit down, i never get back up. i worry about myself. i know that i'm tired, but is that really what's keeping me from starting all these really important things (like a genuine job search)? i worry that the real reason is that i'm scared. i'm afraid to put my portfolio out there. i'm afraid to hear rejection. now if i were you, sitting there reading this, i would be saying "buck up kiddo" under my breath. there is no room for these excuses. but seriously, i think that's what's preventing me from getting up out of my chair and redoing the portfolio/getting my site together/sending out packages n' whatnot.

but the tide is changing. while last month i was content with this comfortable lack of responsibility, now i just feel like i'm stalling. and i can feel the urge to move on, to get on w/ my life. brad tells me, "this part is life too." but it doesn't feel that way. this life feels like a holding cell. i needed the "break" (if working 50+ hours a week is a break) but now i'm ready to move onto the next chapter.

"John Milton was a failure. In writing Paradise Lost his aim was to 'justify the ways of God to men.' Inevitably he fell short and wrote only a monumental poem. Beethoven, whose music was conceived to transcend fate, was a failure. As was Socrates, whose ambition was to make people happy by making them reasonable and just. The surest, noblest way to fail is to set one's standards titanically high.

The flip side of that proposition also seems true. The surest way to succeed is to keep one's striving low. Many people, by external standards, will be 'successes.' They will own homes, eat in better restaurants, dress well and, in some instances, perform socially useful work. Yet fewer people are putting themselves on the line, making as much of their minds and talents as they might. Frequently success is what people settle for when they can't think of something noble enough to be worth failing at." -Laurence Shames

now i'm not in any way comparing myself to Milton or Socrates but the point is there. right now, in this life, i'm doing fine. but i'm striving *real* low. i'm not doing what i love. i'm not where i think i want to be. i need to put myself on the line.