The single most pivotal\profound experience in my life happened in a dream.
It left me feeling like there was something within me that I needed to share with the world. A feeling so strong that it drove me to separate from everyone and everything in my life and change directions.
At the time I was working construction and generally just being a bum. I was partying constantly, was usually on some sort of drug and spent my hours writing or dancing.
The morning after this dream, everything inside me changed. The lack of motivation I had always felt was gone. The need to communicate something was so strong, so fierce that it was the only thing that mattered any more. I HAD to find a way to let whatever that was out.
So I started going to school, community college to get my head back in the mode of studying and I started to separate myself from the crowd I was hanging around. That was the hardest thing, as I think about it now I have a pain in my heart, I still feel like I abandoned them.
These weren’t just my friends, they were my family. I spent every second with them, but it was the only way I knew how to get away from what I saw as a black hole. A life path that held nothing for me, I could see where it was going and it was no where good.
From there, I tried to just follow my passions. I had no idea what I needed to do and for the most part I had no idea what I was doing. I had no plan, just what was immediately in front of me.
Get the pre-reqs done at community college, go to another college… get degree… then what? A job? Then what? Family?
I ended up going to and art school, fitting now that I think about it, but at the time I was paralyzed with the decision between that and an engineering school.
Paralyzed because I knew I would do fine on either path, but I had no idea which one was the right one, which one was the one that would get this out of me.
Animation and game design ended up being my focus. I have always had a strong inclination toward movement. I could always FEEL movement, I could experience it through dancing and felt I could tap in to something beyond myself when I did.
My specialty ended up becoming, hilariously, optimizing and enhancing artists workflows.
12 years later, I have had three jobs in the gaming industry. One could say I have found success, but to me it still feels like just a beginning.
Like those twelve years were just to prepare me for what lies deep within me, the need, the drive, the command to help.
To communicate something, to help people succeed, to help people find themselves.
I feel I am closer now to this than ever.
Like whatever it is, is on the tip of my brain.
Whatever it is, a part of it is my my journal from 10 years ago which I randomly open up last night.
A writing that I pleaded myself to get out in to the world, but have yet to do.
It is perhaps the closest thing I have to the writing I used to do.
There was a journal I had in my early twenties that I would write in all hours of the night, stories about finding true meaning, about exploring the soul, about tapping in to the eternal knowledge within us and getting out of our own ways to live through it.
I lost that journal in Paris France. I left it on a train that I had rushed off trying to make my stop.
Years of writing and self exploration lost.
To this day, that is the single most profound loss I have ever had. But when I search deep for an answer to why I let that happen, the answer is always:
“You weren’t ready.”
Am I now? I have no idea.
But, for some reason or another I opened my replacement journal directly up to that page last night and I read it.
It floored me. The entry was so clear to me despite remembering writing it and feeling like it was completely unintelligible.
It touched me to the core, validated my journey and gave me a jolt of passion to help try to push me through this next wall of fear and self doubt.
As I search for a reason I happened to open my journal to the ONE spot, the only answer I get is, “It’s Time”.
So, whatever that means, I guess it’s my answer.
The Restless Raven 