Can You Hear It?

I'm watching this annoying, stupid beetle fly around my room. It keeps bumping into the light fixture of my ceiling fan like it wants to bust the damn thing into a million pieces. Occasionally it'll swoop down near my head and, like a skittish three-year-old, I tense up and start swatting the air for thirty seconds until I feel I've created a soundless, impenetrable barrier around my body that will now serve as an anti-bug zone. Five seconds later, the freaking thing is back at it, buzzing provocatively near my ear and doing it's frenetic head bang into the light, daring me to interrupt its fun. I look around me for a book so I can catch the beetle in a moment of weakness, and then annihilate it with my herculean strength. I'm so ready to teach this little asshole a lesson, and I wait patiently as it continues to smack its little body into the lightbulb, making an almost imperceptible "ping!" with every blow. Finally, it decides to take a breather and drifts onto the wall, doing figure-8s above my dresser. Then, it stops cold, just sitting there, all buzzing ceased. It's time. I slither over with my unnecessarily huge book, selected with great care from my bookshelf as the weapon of choice. I use my other hand to frame the bug, setting up a mental bulls-eye. Then, just when the book is hoisted up just within demolition range, some ridiculous voice in my head says:

"Wait, wait. What if you miss?"

The thought stops me mid-slaughter, and I'm suddenly frozen. What if I swing with all my might and I don't even kill this cantankerous thing? How could I deal with that kind of failure? I can't even imagine the mortification that would come with hearing the huge hardcover novel in my hands hit the wall, a sickening thud, while the beetle buzzes around the room unscathed, laughing in my face, banging its beady little insect head against the light even faster than before out of jest. My dignity and ego are far too compromised to handle that kind of a blow.

So what do I do? I want more than anything to kill this idiotic, impetuous, inexplicably irritating insect, and yet knowing I might miss is too much to handle. So I cease and desist. I put the obnoxiously huge book back on the shelf, retreat back to my bed, and sit there, feeling seriously fucked in the head.

For people who are a fan of really elaborate segues, hold steady, for you're about to get one right now: beetles can physically buzz around you and drive you nuts, but what about the things in your head that nag at you, buzz in your brain and taunt you, nip at your sanity. The things you desperately want to do, know you can do, but make excuses for why you simply can't, won't, shouldn't. We all have beetles in our heads. Some bigger and louder than others, others a mere shadow that occasionally taunts us when we least expect it. And we are all armed with our personal talents and gifts to defeat this beetle - the huge book we grab off the shelf to combat the little demon bug on the wall of our minds. But something often comes around and, for whatever reason, coerces us into putting the book back on the shelf, letting the beetle thrive, buzz, insult, damage. It's a crying shame, really.

These self-doubt beetles are lethal, and need to be stopped. I'm trying to get rid of mine, but it's in there somewhere, occasionally reminding me of its presence with a little buzz that then equates to a real disappointment in my life. Some big, some small. My biggest struggle to date is the beetle that plagues my confidence in my writing. I've kept a journal since age 4, writing every little thought, event, occurance, what have you. I wrote through the innocence of elementary school, the awkwardness of middle school, the decadence of high school, and then.... I stopped. Just when my life started to go somewhere, I started to think I couldn't possibly account for it all, and my desire to map out my existence through words started to die. It could have been the pressures of college, the intimidation of adulthood, or just the fact that I was a lazy asshole. Regardless, I caught the bug, and it hasn't set me loose. I'm convinced that I can never write anything of merit, that the passion in my heart to write beautiful books and stories for the world will never be enough, that the promise that lurks in my abilities will never transform into actual talent. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

One advancement I have made is that I've finally stopped believing that with age, I'll become better at everything. There are some things time can't teach you. I can wait forever, hoping the dust I gather will make me more wise. Or I can get my ass moving and stop thinking my time will come, my time will come. I may never be as smart as I think I'll become, and I may never garner the experiences I need to be as gifted as I want to be. But what I do have is a mind that is too special to be cluttered with the buzzings of reasons "why not." And that goes for you. We may know what we want, but it means nothing unless we're ballsy enough to look like idiots striving for it. Get over your self-doubt, and listen to the gentle musings of the better version of you that hangs out in your head, wants to emerge, wants to get to know you better. Never let any other noise drown it out. If you listen through the buzzing, you'll hear it.

So, I'm writing this blog at 2:38 AM on a Sunday morning, in my room, on my bed, in the dark, for no reason. I write this for no one. I expect nothing of it. But, the fact that I'm doing it is liberating enough to give the beetle in my head a swift kick to the jaw, or the insect equivalent of one. Suddenly, my room seems much quieter. I might even get some sleep. Maybe, with each entry, I'll annihilate it forever. Thus, I'll write whenever, whatever, and however I want, hopefully daily but at least whenever I feel like it. Feel free to come along for the journey, for I promise it will be wonderfully dull, and extraordinarily ordinary. But at least it's mine.

- LAP etc.