{ chrislip.com/matthew : blog }
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04 October 2005
{ Incurable }
Fresh off an exhausting night of printer malfunctions, hunger pains, and pre-critique stress, I give you my waning self-confidence.Lately I've felt like a near-dead carcass lying in the middle of a hot desert, watching helplessly through glazed eyes as a vulture circles above, dipping closer and closer to my rotting flesh with each pass. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Really I'm just tired—too tired to maintain a healthy and positive outlook, but not tired enough to prevent me from using hyperbole and cliché metaphors—and fatigue can really wear on a person. At the same time, I have to admit that sleep-deprivation is not the only party at fault here. If due only to my innate and incurable cynicism, I think my self-doubt would have the strength to persevere through many years of relative restfulness and contentment.
It's a funny thing, that cynicism. It's both a strength and a weakness.
Like sleep-deprivation, cynicism is also sometimes blamed for things that aren't his fault. In defense of this argument, I cite the circumstances of this past weekend. Saturday afternoon found me sitting in the Legacy Theater of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, watching the last session of General Conference. Up to this point, I had felt "blocked" from inspiration by my cynicism, and I hadn't retained anything of significance from any of the previous sessions. What I noticed, however, is that I had become obsessed with trying to "feel" inspiration in a very literally emotional way. Rather than allowing my brain to process the information in its natural, intellectual way, I was attempting to force an emotional reaction (to no avail). In the last hour of the last session of General Conference, I finally surrendered to my intellect, and inspiration came almost immediately. Words and ideas resonated in my brain, and my thoughts raced with excitement. I felt enlightened, and my inspirational "fog" cleared. Waiting for an emotional reaction had proved useless and depressing, breeding uncertainty and anxiety rather than clarity and confidence. (And cynicism, the poor sap, was finally cleared of all charges.)
I had intended to go on writing for some time, but I am losing energy, and I'll need to save some for Immi. :)
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 17:09 :
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