Relative Something

Sometimes I find myself surprised by the dichotomies I come to realize about myself. I don’t know why it should surprise me. I have been known to express a belief that all things are balanced with a polar opposite, in one way or another. When I become aware of it within my own personality or behavior, why does it surprise me? Go figure. As I write this, I am feeling a new awareness about the different ways I actually do live in the moment, regardless my more obvious pattern of usually allowing myself to be more focused on either my past, or the future.

One easily recognizable aspect of this part of me which resides in the moment, is related to my writing. I really struggle to comfortably write for publication deadlines that are months or years into the future. Heck, even emails leave my computer with me wanting them to be read as fast as they arrive at their destination. It’s not that I produce anything that is particularly time sensitive; no, it’s more that my having created some message at a particular moment in time is most closely associated with my mind at that moment. Maybe that reveals something about me. Does my mind really change all that much that the things I write about might not stand the test of time? Probably not. I’ll rack that one up to the possibility of a lack of confidence.

Yesterday, I spent some time engaged in projects in the garage that likely spawned some of the thinking about how I behave more in the moment than I am aware. I make all these attempts, year after year, to arrange things in an organized manner to facilitate a logical and efficient future use. All for naught. For the most part, I don’t retain any functional recollection of the places I store things, or for that matter, even remember what the things are that I have. When I set about tending to some chore, I take on whatever task appears before me with whatever tool I can locate in the moment. Rarely, if ever, do I benefit from some plan I had in mind at some motivated, constructive phase of my past.

So, in a way, I am both organized, and randomly spontaneous all at the same time.