Building

I have always had a fascination with building. Building my strength, physically and emotionally, building relationships, building and growing the person I am. Building on top of skills I have, in order to gain more, always improving. Making, creating, building with my imagination and mental tools. Making words come together on paper. Building a story. Building my story.

Starting with raw materials: this is a pen, this is paper, and these are your hands. Use your resources, use your mind, talk to people, have experiences to use. Use your voice and tell your story. This is your body. This is your life. What do you want to do? What do you do every day to get there? Start with what you have, to build what you desire. Use your vehicle (body) to do it.

I think in my world, I am never satisfied. Yes, I am exponentially happy. I have things. I feel things deeply, and know love. But I have ambition. I feel like there is more out there.

We are in a remote cabin in Northern Georgia at the moment. I looked out the window at what was happening all around me as we drove here. A house every other mile. The family in the house fending for itself. Loving that they have each other, knowing they have enough. They have literally built the life as they know it.

The physical land around me inspires me. I am nothing to it. What it does every single day is the most important thing to them. To me, what I do should be most central, too. I yearn to wake up every day with ambition and excitement to create my world. To look out and know I am only living for myself (and, yes, those close to me).

Waking up to punch numbers and try to get X dollars per day is not fulfilling to me. Essential, maybe. How do you gain both, the essential and the heart of life?

You build it. You (I) start from the ground, and use my tools- both physical and personal qualities- and build the life I want. I act in the manner I want to project to the world. I work toward the things I want. I think about the process… what we take with us when we build. What we leave behind. What and who we choose to build with. The details, the attention…

The process: a winding, uphill/downhill, never-ending, work in progress.

I have been having this craving to build physical things for a while now. But I don’t know where or how to start. For Christmas, Trav gave me one-on-one lessons from a female builder. To learn the craft of building something beautiful from something broken. To take the time to learn every edge and joint of an object. To be proud of my building.

To me, this is very much a literal, as well as metaphorical situation. I want to be useful in the world, so I’ll make useable things. I respect the act of having materials and creating more. A symbol for my journey and my life.

Building, you see, is an essential part of my life. When I'm still, stuck, stagnant, I regress; my life feels dim. Writing, crafting, building, making myself better in even the most unseen, personal way... This is the building I seek, the fascination I am happy to always be drawn to, yet never conquer.

#building #knowingyourself #becoming #life