Zen It To Win It

I am slow.  The type of slow that causes concern in the hearts and minds of most all that I come in contact with.  It isn't the "slow" of retardation, per se; although there are certain parts of my growth and development that are arrested due to reasons that are no longer valid and so are presently entirely my fault and inexcusable.  There are also neurodivergences that are complicated and whose origins are still a medical conundrum (“trauma” not being an acceptable basis for a biological diagnosis). It is a slowness that defies reason given my level of competency and energetic erraticisms and bouts of zealous efficiency. I simply do not have my life "together" in the traditional ways. There is no real reason. It just "is". I have masked my life on the spectrum so long, that it has eaten into my face and shines as ineptitude and irresponsibility, possibly mental illness. I, however; do not adhere to labels.

I have undertaken and discarded many professions in my lifetime.  Not all of them have been successful.  In fact, considering that I am not currently in any of those professions clearly means that I was not successful in any of them.  I suppose working for myself could be considered as the culmination of all of those failed professions into my one failed business.  Again, efficiency in action.  That being said, there is very little in the world that I have wanted to do that I have not yet done.  I have traveled extensively, engaged in many love affairs with gorgeous men, both foreign and domestic.  I have raised animals, children and Hell, all while transmuting traumas, tragedies and celebrating triumphs sometimes simultaneously. 

So what is left to do, one would wonder? How will I live out the rest of my days if the best an most exciting is behind me? Well, my retirement plan is to work.  I know, I know, what an assbackward notion.  I have even made the remark that I am ‘Benjamin Button-ing it’ in regards to my life’s unfolding.  It was not my plan to work as “retirement”.  It just ends up that way to balance out my life’s early vagaries, exploits and escapades; and to afford what it costs to live and care for all of my responsibilities.  I do not lament this fact, however; I traveled when the drugs were good, the climate was predictable and the phones were dumb - meaning that connections had richness, depth and purity, and not based on algorithmic importance, clout and trends. 

I suppose that is why fewer and fewer youth are putting their data online and going analogue.  To that end, I am noticing a global uptick in subjects such as consciousness, meditation,  mindfulness, quantum healing, etc.  I reckon that all are trying to find some nexus between productivity as necessity and efficiency as desire, or vice versa.  How do we get more done that needs to get done, so we can do more that we want to do.  I think at this point, I can now seamlessly merge the “needing” and the “wanting”.  I want to slow down and luckily, these days due mainly to my age, I need to slow down. 

I do not know what good it would have done to live the other way, retiring in middle age and then traveling.  I reckon by then, most folks have kids whose needs they need to attend to, or health problems or general fears regarding the state of the world and how it is much more dangerous than they remembered from their youth.  

As much as I feel like a failure for not having reached the zenith of “success” by way of assets and the like, I still feel content and fulfilled in the knowledge that my later years will be spent raising my child with zero regrets and teaching him things that I too am learning, such as: investing, how to buy a home, what 0% APR financing and a “crypto” is and how to accurately pronounce the word “entrepreneur” - let alone how to be a successful one.

It was only in slowing down did I realize how much I had been holding my breath as I made my way through life’s adventures and how little I know about how the world actually works. I know how people work, but not the complex systems which govern them  Perhaps, now is the time to get back to my breath, calm my overactive and adrenaline aligned nervous system and find the zen to begin - to start my “adult” life now that it is close to the end. #nofilter