A moment of self-reflection

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a dream. Not one of those dreams where unicorns fly you around orchards full of candy-apple trees, and not one of those dreams from which you wake up terrified, heart pounding, and check the closet for monsters. No, it's more of a numbness than a dream, sort of...being present...but not at the same time. It's that feeling where you look out the window and you see the flowers on the tree outside and you think to yourself "there's flowers on the tree", but you don't stop to think "wow, they're beautiful", or "I've never seen flowers bloom this close to Winter", or "I should go climb the tree and pick one to see what they smell like". It's that feeling of passive noticing. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I've never been a passive person. Well, that's not true. In my interactions with people, I'm a very passive person. But in the way I relate to the world, in the way I see life, with me, it's always been very active. It's always been a sense of presentness, a sense of importance, a sense of beauty. I've been known to make myself late to meetings because I wanted to stop and play with butterflies, or taken the long way home because I love the way the trees made a canopy over the road at dusk. I have always been one to actively seek these things out.

So this morning when I looked at the tree and noticed the flowers and then turned away and went back to my reading for class, I realized something had to change. I don't know what it is yet. I don't know why it is that I'm so unmotivated to go seek out the world. And to be honest, I don't know how to change it. It's hard to change something when you're not sure what's wrong.

Maybe I've been working myself too hard. I've been focusing so much on academia, on writing the papers, on trying so hard to sound intelligent, that I've lost myself. I was telling a friend the other day that the academy is sucking the creativity out of me. I wonder if that's what this is: a manifestation of the loss of creativity. I'm taking winter break to get back into art. Last night I wrote a poem in my head, but decided it wasn't worth writing down. Maybe tomorrow I'll write one down. Maybe I'll even share it with you.

All I know is that this passivity has got to stop. I'm remembering the way I was a few years ago, and I know I'm not that person anymore, but there are aspects of myself that I miss. Eva used to always tell me I was intense. People used to not be able to look me in the eye because they were afraid of losing themselves in me losing myself in theirs. That type of intense. I don't know if I want to come across quite that strong anymore, but I miss the quiet calculation I used to have, the precision before I spoke, the way that words came out in poetry rather than in prose. My favorite time of day was dusk, when the shadows made everything look different than they were.

Now I sleep through the sunrise. I wake up when the sky is already blue, but I don't notice its color. There's no magic in daytime for me. There never has been. I think I need to change my hours again, let myself be inspired by the breaking of the day, and sit out on the grass outside and make myself one with the world in the morning.

I want to stop saying the things that don't matter. I've never been one for talking without reason. I want to see the world in color again.I'm sick of having a muted palate.