Trust30 – #30 – DeFault

This is it. The last one. Thank goodness. I think. Here's the quote.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And here's the prompt.

Think of all the things that are not working in your life. That job you don't like, that relationship that's not working, those friends that annoy you. Now turn them all on you. Imagine that everything that's not working in your life, is your fault. How would you approach it? What would you work on to change your life to the state that you want it to be?

Oh, thank you, Carlos Miceli, author of the flavor text and writing prompt to finish up Trust30, for feeding the very thing that I was trying to kill off yesterday. Of course it's my fault. It's all my fault. But that's what's killing my ability to move forward right now. So maybe fault isn't the right word here. It's not my fault. It's my responsibility.

 Here's where I'm at right now. I am constantly convincing myself that it IS ALL MY FAULT. And that because I am a world-class screw-up, that I am therefore unworthy of and unable to achieve success in various areas. If you're doing this to yourself, let me tell you this is damaging, corrosive, and an absolute killer of motivation, drive, faith, hope, and optimism. At some point, you have to stop looking at everything that's wrong and wondering whose fault it all is. At some point, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHOSE FAULT IT IS. What matters is "what am I going to do about it?"

(This, incidentally, is one of the reasons politics is so cuckoo crazy right now. Everyone's so busy blaming everyone else that there's less and less room to actually talk about solutions. Which in my head is going to require massive spending cuts in all programs as well as the phasing out and elimination of some government programs and possibly governmental entities altogether and not just refusing to raise the debt ceiling but in fact taking steps to lower the national debt… which is crazy talk I know, marks me yet again as a conservative nutjob and probably belongs in another post more specifically about politics, and not one about letting go of blame and taking responsibility for moving things forward…)

I keep thinking about the movie "Gumball Rally". It's a crazy little movie about a cross-country race. Raul Julia is in it, playing an Italian driver hired by one of the racers to drive his car (and him) across the country and win the race. Raul gets in the car. He sits down. And he turns to his passenger and says "Let me tell you the first rule of Italian driving." At which point he reaches up and tears off the rear-view mirror from the dashboard and tosses it in the back seat. "That which is behind me is not important."

Focus on what's ahead. Pay attention to where you ARE, and what's COMING UP, but you (and I… mostly I) must let go of the past.

Maybe there are areas where I could have been more responsible, more appreciative, more diligent, more discerning… in the past. And that's all right. The important thing is to look forward and drive baby drive. Or in other words,

Press on, peeps. Press on.

And that's it. Frakkin Trust30. Holy moly. Maybe now I can get back to a little fiction writing. Whoof. What would THAT be like?