An Angel on Each Shoulder

Oh the age old debate…Am I a bad person or not? We all deal with it, don’t we? At one point I may be secure in me, my decisions, who I am and then suddenly the next I am out here doubting everything about the choices I've made. It’s kind of shocking thinking about the calm I felt for several years just quite recently and then how quickly that has become an internal turbulence that I just can’t seem to shake. Quite literally at the moment, every waking moment that is not spent actively distracted by something in the present, is consumed by my mind that repeats, replays and asks the same doubting questions over and over again.

I’ve been spiraling recently. I actually think so many people are with the constant shocking news and understandably we are all finding our own ways of coping and dealing with the never ending incomprehensible flow of information. I struggle because I am very well aware and believe that a huge part of the problem is the constant flow of very graphic and descriptive news that is unavoidable. Instagram has now only become a place of stress induction for me. It may be something else for you too. All I know is that I am overwhelmed. But in the same breath I don’t want to be disconnected. I feel obligated to stay up to date, connected and in touch with the world, with the people suffering and the need to find a way to navigate this privilege I was unmistakably gifted with.

With each sentence I write right now there are 3 new ideas and thoughts I could branch off into with how I feel, my concerns and doubts for the world, for myself, for others in more desperate situations as well as thoughts in situations more similar to mine. Which frankly of all people in this world, I am the most spoiled there is at the moment. Without dispute in my mind.

And this leads me to a thought on my own self obsession. The way that in all distress I also am so deeply intertwined and confused with myself and my own mind. Because is all of this really about me? In a more logical sense, It really is about everyone other than the privileged like me and yet here I am over complicating things for myself. Making it about me. Here I am not putting all of my extra energy into the greater cause. Do others think similarly to me? The thoughts are a never ending cycle in my mind. Making their swift movement in and out from one another while simultaneously intertwining with other concepts and ideas almost as if they are all coming together to create some complex, messy, poorly knit blanket. A blanket with no real distinct pattern or color scheme as if someone picked up all of the left over thread, wool, and yarn they could find to create a monster of a blanket. A blanket that as it forms is shown to be riddled with holes and loose threads, forming something closer to a long deformed landscape rather than a flat delicate plane.

That’s all for now.