The Sewer

The city is cleaning out the sewer outside my building today. It's disgusting. There's a cloud of shit-smelling fowlness outside of which I'll spare you a description. I assume it's necessary, though, to prevent a nastier clog from backing up into the street (eww). So vacuum away, guys.

I've been on my self-improvement project for about a year and half now. In reality, my entire life has been, is, and will continue to be a self-improvement project and personal journey, but it was only recently that I started figuring out that I can honestly and truthfully act, do, and be whatever I want. Moreover, my life had been a certain experience, a situation in which I developed, and, in true human form, I adapted to my situation to gain as much benefit and avoid as much pain as possible. I unknowingly took the perspective that I had to accept whatever the world gave me and however people treated me, failing to realize that I, in fact, had any power to affect my environment... the unfortunate affect of overbearing parents.

The last year and a half has shown me that my adaptation also partly involves a reaction of my environment to me; so much so that it almost entirely depends upon me. I can develop the strength to take whatever the world throws my way, I can develop the confidence to go after anything I want and effortlessly roll with change, I can make choices to include or exclude aspects of my environment, and I can acquire the wisdom to know what all that should be. I have so much influence that I can make my environment whatever I need it to be.

The difficulty is fear, doubt, anger, disbelief, and poor decision making. These used to be clogging up my mind, and some are still stuck in there: fear of approaching a girl, believing she didn't want to be approached, doubting that I'm worth her attention, deciding to stay in on a Saturday night. All thoughts that would run through my head and more or less control my life. It's been my own sewer clogged with shit. And like the people traversing the sidewalk outside my building, I went about my business not knowing a whole mess of crap was clogging up the works on a much deeper level and only visible when it would back up to the surface or remenants of its smell would fill the air of my enviroment.

I want to say that I've cleaned out my psyche, that I'm actualized, but that's not yet entirely the case. Fear still rises in certain situations, anger and sadness happen from time to time, and I decide to take on more projects than I should. Consciousness of it, though, is what got me this far. It'll eventually get me where I want to be as this blog will one day reflect.