SKETCH PAD: "Done with Trying"

Before we get started let me just own up to something here. It’s been way too long since I’ve put one to paper in any sort of meaningful way, and that was a promise to myself that I’m not at all happy about breaking.

But that’s what we do, right? We clear the decks, get organized, focus on one goal or another, on being the person we know we could be, roll up our sleeves and have at it. And for a while it’s great. Feels like nothing in this world could stop us. Then before we even realize it things start to get sloppy. Never too bad at first maybe, but it inevitably happens. The day-to-day grind starts to take its toll; the dishes pile up, the problems start to seep in - the family, the money, the career, etc. etc. - and then there’s one too many late nights and pretty soon that shining light that was the beacon to “your new self” has dimmed so much that you’re just back on the couch watching Netflix with a hangover, and that deep ambition that had once propelled your forward with so much vigor is now stuck in the back of the closet, collecting dust behind last Christmas’s jigsaw puzzle.

And you never even noticed it happening; the hamster wheel just keeps going round and round and round… That’s been my experience at least, every time I’ve set out to try and make something happen.

That’s the problem with new beginnings - there’s too much trying involved. You try to make a change, you try to be more disciplined, more energetic, more focused, you try to be a better version of yourself, to accomplish some sort of dream life you’ve cooked up in your head. And in the end you just end up right where you started with the same old you that you started off with. Just a little older maybe, and a little more resigned to the idea that this is just how things must be.

What a broken system…

And you know how Bukowski felt about trying, right? There are only two words he left us with on his gravestone are “Don’t Try.”

Clearly he was against it.

But what the fuck does that mean, anyways? Give up? Stop shaving, stay in bed, quit your job, become a fat slob, drink yourself into oblivion everyday and piss away your dreams and your life?

Well, despite his outward appearance and his proclivity towards boozing and mucking things up on a personal level, no I do not think this is what he meant at all. Obviously that would be pretty stupid and apathetic and a pretty gross way to live (although that does seem to be the path of some of us out there, regardless if Bukowski’s advice or not.)

But what’s also gross is living in a state of conditioning here your dream life is somehow out there dangling in the imaginary like a carrot on a stick, while the real life version of ourselves goes undervalued, under-sung, under appreciated, a version of ourselves that we seem to feel some inherent need to fix some day, if only we had the time.

What Bukowski was saying in those two words was his lasting lesson of his lifetime of frustration and failures: Do not try to be a writer. Just write. The success that he had in life didn’t come from when he was searching to success, it came when he was doing what he loved to do. He loved the art of writing, the same way we all should love the art of living our own lives.

Ha! Well that’s what I took away from it, anyways.

The problem is that while each one of us has the potential to be our own greatest champion, we also can be our own worst enemy as well. And that’s the part that’s hidden, that’s lurking in the muck way deep down in the subconscious, the dark corners of the mind that very few us take the time and effort to shine a light on, and that’s actually what is in charge of this crazy roller coaster we call our lives.

And you “trying your best” is no match for that shit.

It sure wasn’t for me. So a month ago I got some ink. Nothing special, a simple design, done in twenty minutes or so, and cost a hundred bucks, including tip. But it’s right there on the forearm, and reminds me whenever I need it to stay present, live the life I’ve got right here and right now, and to stop kidding myself with all the trying.

We live in a crazy world. Quite literally, I turn on the TV and see stuff going on that I had never imagined I’d ever bear witness to as a little kid. It’s like a bad mix of sci-fi, a monster truck pull, and the worst reality TV I’ve ever been forced to watch. And that’s just the evening news. Never mind the pressures of day to day reality, trying to make a buck and find some sort of security and meaning in a world so seemingly intent on going mad. Don’t even get me started on that shit. Seems like a lifetime ago that I washed up out here in this desert, starting over wholly from scratch, being forced to scratch my head and figure out where the fuck it all went wrong….

But I’m drifting now, and it’s time to put the pen down for a while and get on with the day. And what was the main takeaway from this ramble?… whatever you want to pull from it, I guess. There will always be a million distractions and even more excuses, but if you want to do something then you have to start somewhere - and it turns out somewhere is less about a particular place than is about a particular time.

And finally, at long last, I am truly beginning to truly grasp that phrase that has floated by me a thousand time before. “There is no time like the present.” Because the heart of the matter is that there literally isn’t.