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^_^ Graowf Exposed ...
11 years ago
General
I'm about to do something I have been reticent to do since I found FA.
RiskiSaffie asked in a shout: "*wags tail thoughtfully* why all the broodiness, woof?"
Rather than shouting at one another, I thought I'd just make it an opportunity to provide a little insight into the brooding mind of a greymuzzled Canian. I can't do this in just a few words, but I'll try. Brooding implies deep contemplation of perplexities over the self. It involves a lifetime of experience.
I've had my midlife crisis, I know what that is. It occurred closely in time with an intensely stressful three-year stint on an IT enterprise/systems architecture co-leadership assignment. I got myself re-assigned from that to something else when the division lead quit due to stress. The assignment was not a catalyst for the crisis, the crisis was not a catalyst for the stress of the assignment. They were just temporally coincident. By the time I left the IT architect assignment, I'd developed a nervous twitch in my left eyelid amongst other physical manifestations of emotional trauma. I'm a very strong person with a knack for finding a calm center in any storm and navigating safe passage through the challenges of life, but even I was shaken to the foundations by this dual assault upon my psyche. It took a Novena to St. Jude to put me back on my paws and about another three years to reach a point where I felt fully recovered.
They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it changes you, or it causes you to reflect on who and what you are, where you've been, where you'd thought you should be, and where you are going to go.
When I was barely older than a pup, I had a fascination with werewolves, a vivid imagination, ran wild through the woods around my family's 65 acre farm, and knew I wanted to work with computers in some capacity or write novels. I chose computers as a career (specifically programming) and writing became a hobby. I wrestled with that choice all through college. I was an atheist/agnostic back then and had also bought into the idea that "it must be seen to be believed" -- that truth is found only in what can be reasoned about through our perceptions of the material universe. Art, in any form, therefore, was a fine diversion, but when it presumed to pronounce truth, it was merely being presumptuous. Truth, I had concluded, can only come from a strictly "scientific" analysis of the material universe.
But the interesting thing about reality is that whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, you can still stub your toe on it. I had a totally unexpected, unsolicited, and undeniable personal spiritual experience that I will not go into right now (maybe another journal someday), but made me realize that there is more to "reality" than what we know and sense. Even the staunchest atheist scientist knows this, whether he acknowledges it or not: a hypothesis requires a belief in something heretofore unknown and heretofore unknowable. I cannot see neutrons, nor feel them, nor attribute anything I sense to them directly, yet I believe they are real. Confronted with a personal experience and presence of the unknown, I could no longer remain an atheist or even remain agnostic. I had stubbed my toe on God.
This is not Graowf's personal coming-to-faith testimony. This is simply a turning point in my understanding of what it means to be. I woke up to the realization that without God, existence is a paradox. Once I opened the door to the possibility of Deity, the door to art swung wide as well. Why? I'm going to tell you.
If I find beauty in a green meadow in summer, or find beauty in the sparkle of sunlight on a running creek, or find beauty in the particular shade of blue in the sky today (it's actually gray, but you get the point), what have I found? I have found a personal, subjective appreciation of something my senses perceive. Beauty has no practical use. It cannot be analyzed and theorized. What makes one dandelion more attractive than another dandelion just next to it? I might say one thing, you might disagree, choosing the first over my favorite for entirely different reasons. Regardless, my pet true dog can't appreciate "beauty" at all. She hasn't the capacity. Neither can the bees that feed on the dandelion, nor the birds that fly over it, nor the deer that run by it, nor the cows that poop on it. That I find it beautiful contributes nothing to my survival. So why is it beautiful? You might give me some reason involving pleasure centers of the brain and neurotransmitters, but it's still a pointless evolutionary adaptation. There is no material explanation for "beauty". The beautiful is beautiful simply because it was made to be beautiful, and I can say that it is beautiful because I was made to be able to appreciate the beauty of that which is made.
Do you see? Beauty is an end unto itself, and the appreciation of beauty is woven into what it means to be human (even if we are just part human hybrids ^v^). I could, in fact, present a theological hypothesis as to why it is our highest calling, but I won't do THAT here, either (maybe another journal someday).
The point is that the seeds of an awakening were planted.
Sometime after college, I knew I had to put the conflict between programmer and writer to rest, so I embarked upon an effort to make a definitive commitment to one or the other. Primarily for practical reasons (I was, by then, married with one tiny pup), I chose to continue my computer programming career path.
I'm extremely good at commitments and resolutions. "Loyalty" is, after all, a hallmark of the reputation of certain species of canids. I put the writer to sleep (mostly), and strangely, when I did that, I also put the inner animal to sleep -- werewolves ceased to hold the old fascination, nature became a thing I was content to pave if it meant I didn't have to try to grow a pretty lawn. I had no desire to go camping or take hikes any more. But animals, when they sleep, relive in dreams their waking hours, and they kick and whimper and whine. When I tumbled into the abyss of my midlife crisis and shattered on the rocks and jagged stressors lying at the bottom, I was, in one sense, laid open, and the animal has jarred awake. And it was well-rested. It will not go back to sleep. The old conflict rose again with it, but now times have changed. Now an opportunity to make a career change looms on the horizon. A second chance is imminent in less than 10 years. There are risks, but they are not terribly great, yet I have a family for which I am the sole bread-winner to think about: my mate and 8 pups who will share with me any risks I choose to take. I make decisions not just for myself, but for 10. Yet, I must also be true to myself, must seek to discern what I am called to do and be, and if I missed my calling the first time around or found it, or if I am only infatuated with a delusion of other possibilities. It's odd to have lived confidently and mastered a way of life and work and then suddenly to turn 90 degrees and begin again.
For the first time in decades, maybe in my entire life, I feel a little lost and often find myself restless.
Thus, I am brooding.
But I am not unhappy in my brooding. Life is all part of a Great Adventure, and finding my part in it, and playing my part in it, and observing others experiencing their parts in it, are what make it exciting. So, lost, restless, brooding, excited, I can wag my tail as I marvel in a kind of epic contentment through all its majestic infinity.
This is Graowf.
RiskiSaffie asked in a shout: "*wags tail thoughtfully* why all the broodiness, woof?"Rather than shouting at one another, I thought I'd just make it an opportunity to provide a little insight into the brooding mind of a greymuzzled Canian. I can't do this in just a few words, but I'll try. Brooding implies deep contemplation of perplexities over the self. It involves a lifetime of experience.
I've had my midlife crisis, I know what that is. It occurred closely in time with an intensely stressful three-year stint on an IT enterprise/systems architecture co-leadership assignment. I got myself re-assigned from that to something else when the division lead quit due to stress. The assignment was not a catalyst for the crisis, the crisis was not a catalyst for the stress of the assignment. They were just temporally coincident. By the time I left the IT architect assignment, I'd developed a nervous twitch in my left eyelid amongst other physical manifestations of emotional trauma. I'm a very strong person with a knack for finding a calm center in any storm and navigating safe passage through the challenges of life, but even I was shaken to the foundations by this dual assault upon my psyche. It took a Novena to St. Jude to put me back on my paws and about another three years to reach a point where I felt fully recovered.
They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it changes you, or it causes you to reflect on who and what you are, where you've been, where you'd thought you should be, and where you are going to go.
When I was barely older than a pup, I had a fascination with werewolves, a vivid imagination, ran wild through the woods around my family's 65 acre farm, and knew I wanted to work with computers in some capacity or write novels. I chose computers as a career (specifically programming) and writing became a hobby. I wrestled with that choice all through college. I was an atheist/agnostic back then and had also bought into the idea that "it must be seen to be believed" -- that truth is found only in what can be reasoned about through our perceptions of the material universe. Art, in any form, therefore, was a fine diversion, but when it presumed to pronounce truth, it was merely being presumptuous. Truth, I had concluded, can only come from a strictly "scientific" analysis of the material universe.
But the interesting thing about reality is that whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, you can still stub your toe on it. I had a totally unexpected, unsolicited, and undeniable personal spiritual experience that I will not go into right now (maybe another journal someday), but made me realize that there is more to "reality" than what we know and sense. Even the staunchest atheist scientist knows this, whether he acknowledges it or not: a hypothesis requires a belief in something heretofore unknown and heretofore unknowable. I cannot see neutrons, nor feel them, nor attribute anything I sense to them directly, yet I believe they are real. Confronted with a personal experience and presence of the unknown, I could no longer remain an atheist or even remain agnostic. I had stubbed my toe on God.
This is not Graowf's personal coming-to-faith testimony. This is simply a turning point in my understanding of what it means to be. I woke up to the realization that without God, existence is a paradox. Once I opened the door to the possibility of Deity, the door to art swung wide as well. Why? I'm going to tell you.
If I find beauty in a green meadow in summer, or find beauty in the sparkle of sunlight on a running creek, or find beauty in the particular shade of blue in the sky today (it's actually gray, but you get the point), what have I found? I have found a personal, subjective appreciation of something my senses perceive. Beauty has no practical use. It cannot be analyzed and theorized. What makes one dandelion more attractive than another dandelion just next to it? I might say one thing, you might disagree, choosing the first over my favorite for entirely different reasons. Regardless, my pet true dog can't appreciate "beauty" at all. She hasn't the capacity. Neither can the bees that feed on the dandelion, nor the birds that fly over it, nor the deer that run by it, nor the cows that poop on it. That I find it beautiful contributes nothing to my survival. So why is it beautiful? You might give me some reason involving pleasure centers of the brain and neurotransmitters, but it's still a pointless evolutionary adaptation. There is no material explanation for "beauty". The beautiful is beautiful simply because it was made to be beautiful, and I can say that it is beautiful because I was made to be able to appreciate the beauty of that which is made.
Do you see? Beauty is an end unto itself, and the appreciation of beauty is woven into what it means to be human (even if we are just part human hybrids ^v^). I could, in fact, present a theological hypothesis as to why it is our highest calling, but I won't do THAT here, either (maybe another journal someday).
The point is that the seeds of an awakening were planted.
Sometime after college, I knew I had to put the conflict between programmer and writer to rest, so I embarked upon an effort to make a definitive commitment to one or the other. Primarily for practical reasons (I was, by then, married with one tiny pup), I chose to continue my computer programming career path.
I'm extremely good at commitments and resolutions. "Loyalty" is, after all, a hallmark of the reputation of certain species of canids. I put the writer to sleep (mostly), and strangely, when I did that, I also put the inner animal to sleep -- werewolves ceased to hold the old fascination, nature became a thing I was content to pave if it meant I didn't have to try to grow a pretty lawn. I had no desire to go camping or take hikes any more. But animals, when they sleep, relive in dreams their waking hours, and they kick and whimper and whine. When I tumbled into the abyss of my midlife crisis and shattered on the rocks and jagged stressors lying at the bottom, I was, in one sense, laid open, and the animal has jarred awake. And it was well-rested. It will not go back to sleep. The old conflict rose again with it, but now times have changed. Now an opportunity to make a career change looms on the horizon. A second chance is imminent in less than 10 years. There are risks, but they are not terribly great, yet I have a family for which I am the sole bread-winner to think about: my mate and 8 pups who will share with me any risks I choose to take. I make decisions not just for myself, but for 10. Yet, I must also be true to myself, must seek to discern what I am called to do and be, and if I missed my calling the first time around or found it, or if I am only infatuated with a delusion of other possibilities. It's odd to have lived confidently and mastered a way of life and work and then suddenly to turn 90 degrees and begin again.
For the first time in decades, maybe in my entire life, I feel a little lost and often find myself restless.
Thus, I am brooding.
But I am not unhappy in my brooding. Life is all part of a Great Adventure, and finding my part in it, and playing my part in it, and observing others experiencing their parts in it, are what make it exciting. So, lost, restless, brooding, excited, I can wag my tail as I marvel in a kind of epic contentment through all its majestic infinity.
This is Graowf.
a second chance? (is it okay to ask what that is?)
going from something you know to beginning again *finds it hard to imagine*
I am glad you can still wag your tail wif so much on your plate *wags her own tail thoughtfully*
A lot of living, a lot of experiences. Mine aren't really exceptional and though I've had struggles now and the, nothing particularly bad or difficult has happened to me. For that, I wag my tail thankfully.
sounds like you have a very interesting life *wags tail thoughtfully*i'm glad you stay positive though~ .^^.
Occasionally an essay.
I can see in your work all of the elements you need to take the next terrifying step in your life. And as challenging as the transition might be, I think you can succeed. Let that inner beast rip down the barriers your human fear has built.
And I know I speak only from the juvenile nature of my existence, but I have seen many people succeed at impossible things even in my relatively short existence. It is their determination and persistence that takes them to where they want to go. You can do it dear Groawf. And I'll be here as your cheerleader the entire way. *hugs*
Ps- have you checked out the furry writer's guild website yet? There's apparently a ton of readers, editors, and publishers over there all helping eachother out with their work. That and inkbunny is supposed to be a good site to get a little more support. (Things I learned while at ANE).
*additional hugs*
Thanks for your support, FeiOna, it means a lot! .... and thanks for the leads on websites....
Oh, and you have a maturity beyond your years, by the way. I've thought more than once, "that girl's got it together."