It has recently been bought to my attention that I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life following the mantra of concentrating on myself in a fuck who you want me to be type manner that can rub people up the wrong way. I have focused so much energy on being different and being on the outer that I have effectively alienated myself from the very world that I live in, purely for the sake of being an individual. I’ve always actively sort out the path of most resistance and chosen to trek down its treacherous route armed with no survival skills but rather a potty mouth, a chip on my shoulder and a fuck-you attitude that has seen the somewhat difficult path towards success transform into an inhospitable trail of terror and doom.
I’ve undertaken battles with depression, kicking its arse to the curb more than once. I’ve squared off against my demons, my hopes, my fears and my failings more times than I could care to count. But every single time I have told myself that I was doing what I wanted to do, that I was acting in a manner that I was proud of. With willpower you can do anything I’d tell myself. With the stubbornness and intelligence I possess anything should theoretically be possible… But what happens when willpower just isn’t enough? What happens when suddenly all of the ground that you’ve won through those hellacious battles is ripped out from under you like a cheap rug? What happens when that same pride that spurs you towards greatness starts to become the very thing anchoring you to your own failings?
Well, you find yourself where I am right now: back at square one. For all my talk of personal development and growing over the past eighteen months I somehow seem to find myself in a startlingly similar position to where I was back then. I’m still pressed into a corner by all of my failings (which still stand between me and my dreams), and I’m still preparing myself to come out swinging. I honestly thought that I found myself for a while there. For a precious six months or so the world was a glorious place filled with so much potential, but now in the grip of another fucking frustrating bout of writers block I’m starting to think that the world can go fuck itself all over again.
I was lost and I was found through my writing. But recently I’ve shifted my focuses away from what is truly important in my life and I’ve lost sight of all that I could be once more. I’ve become disillusioned and disheartened by rejection and the mundane nuances of everyday life and now I need to be found again.
Right now I have five manuscripts sitting on my desktop in various states of completion that haven’t been touched in almost two months. Five. With the average novel sitting around the sixty thousand word mark I have a rather ambitious end goal of over three hundred thousand words that are currently stuck in my fucking head unable to make that transition from imagination to the page. With those kinds of numbers I should be spending every waking minute pouring my heart out onto my computer screen, but instead I’m walking around in a state of frustrated trance at my own inabilities to find myself within my own thoughts.
So what do I do? How do you find solace in yourself when you’re struggling to reign in the lives of five separate protagonists and their counterparts in addition to your own? What happens when your life as a writer suddenly becomes your life as a mentally exhausted man parading himself as a writer? How do you become found again?
For once, I don’t know…
…That’s right. For the first time in the history of this site I actually don’t know the answers to the very questions that I pose. The self-proclaimed all-knowing mind of Chris Nicholas is actually sitting here pondering over my current predicament without the faintest fucking clue as to how to overcome it. I don’t know how to find myself right now. But I do know this: I am and always will be an individual. I will never fall into line with what others expect of me, and I will never make excuses for myself. I am a writer, a man, a lover and an arsehole all rolled into one. I will always live my life with that chip on my shoulder that says I don’t give fuck about what others think of me. And I truly believe that while I am currently lost within a maze of three hundred thousand words, one day soon my talent and my drive will be found again.
Share this:
The Renegade Press 
Reblogged this on Julx's Blog and commented:
Awesome post… Had to reblog.
Chris is not alone in this. So many of us do it. Some intentional to please those we love; and some, don’t even have a clue they’re doing it at all… Question is now… Do you?
I tend to think of my defensive nature as a product of my environment. I get where your coming from with the ” come out swinging ” attitude. We determine that to be strong and battle through what life throws our way, we have to fight. It’s taken me a long time to learn that some battles can be won with out the fight. When your always looking for the next fight, your always on standby filled with anger and anxiety. I am blunt, forthright, potty mouthed with no filter. So add in a mix of anger and anxiety, with a defensive attitude about everything, well you get abrasive, foul mouthed, ready for a fight, me against the world Jeni. Not a person I want to hang out with.
So, I had to step back, take a deep breath, and let go. I had to learn to pick my battles, and that not everything in life is out to get me. I don’t have to be ready to defend everything in my life to anyone. I became comfortable with myself enough to recognise that what I thought I was defending was just a cover for my own sense of inadequacies. If I can’t justify within myself what I am doing or saying, then maybe I shouldn’t do it. And if I can justify the words or actions, then they don’t need defending.
I’m not as eloquent as I’d like to be, in commenting on this post, but I am sincere. Since I have rewired my personal hard drive to new ways to handle life’s lessons, I find that I’m still blunt, forthright and foul mouthed. I don’t think that will ever change. But now, without the anger and anxiety of waiting for the next fight, I am happier. My personality is more optimistic, and good natured. And though I can’t say I’m miss popularity, the friends I have are the best kind. Dependable, honest, loyal, kind, and refuse to allow me to wallow in any kind of self pity. I guess I’m just harse enough that I don’t attract false friends, and just real enough to draw in the kind of friends I would to be. I hope that makes sense to you.
“There is a saying in Tibetan,
‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is,
if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”
— Dalai Lama XIV
Experience is not what happens to a man.
It is what a man does with what happens to him.
~Aldous Leonard Huxley
Once the consumer is inside a Hypnotic trance, the hypnotherapist would’ve them visualize and focus on the many various aspects of exercise.
With a bit of practice, however, you can buy that things
get much more simple to do. He reported significant reductions
of pain and dysphoria following Hypnosis.