Hidden Questions

I've been stuck. Haven't posted here in weeks now, and feeling some dissatisfaction around that.
It's not for lack of things to write about, or lack of thoughts about matters personal, public and political. It's just that...well, I haven't felt compelled, nor clear, nor focused enough to lay the words down, to process and work through the thoughts, which has really been, apart from the sharing and interaction that results, the single most satisfying aspect of blogging.

But this is characteristic of me. It's a personal trait that has both enhanced and limited my travel through life, this tendency to shift and lose focus, to drop, lose or abandon, any pattern, any habit, or routine. I've never been a steady person. I've never managed to choose a particular path and simply stay with it. Before long, I start wondering what would happen, what would I find, simply from travelling in a diffrent direction, or along a different route. Because...there's the allure that draws me toward newness, and the unanticipated, the different and the unknown. There's an energy that's triggered, merely by the possibiity of transcending the known. It is stimulating, and enticing. It has rarely failed to draw me off, at least to the borderlands of the familiar, where I can look out toward the beckoning other.

Of course this is nothing new, nor peculiar to me. That in itself doesn't make it any easier to comprehend, to manage, to come to terms with. And so, I struggle.

From these words, it might seem that I think myself some wild child, a drifter, explorer, some restless embodiment of creative yearning. But that's not the case. Yes, I like to think myself inquisitive, curious, daring to a degree, eager to embrace what may alter and stretch me. But, at the same time, I can't deny being a plodder, an introvert, one drawn to the safety of norms. I have a strongly addictive side, as well, a side virtually defined by routine, habit,  by aggressive fealty to "the known". That part of me is as strong, as resistant to efforts to purge it, as any other. It is as much me as the creative genie I like to think of myself as embodying.

This line of thinking is recalling William Irwin Thompson to mind. He is a cultural philosopher, whose books impressed me deeply thirty years ago. He presented a compelling argument for how apparent opposites work together to achieve what they mutually aspire to. The example of this which struck me most was how the wild and raving prophet in the desert, and the staid and studious priest in his temple, while outwardly in constant opposition, actually work together to promote the spiritual realm. That always stayed with me, and I guess I see both prophet and priest tugging at my spirit, and only hope that they are shepherding me in the direction of growth and wisdom.

And what has any of this to do with blogging, and with being stuck as I am? I'm not sure. But I sense that it has something to do with seeking some better balance, between this writing and the novel I started but haven't pursued, between my passion for my youth work and the growing need to be doing something different, between my comforts with what is, what I already have, and my desire to have yet another transformative life shift that takes me to where I can not even imagine.

This is, hopefully, a fruitful tension between freedom and duty that I'm feeling. This tension presses my dreams right up against my practical realities. It juxtaposes wild ambition with radical acceptance, impatient hunger with timeless gratitude. I both worry about how it will come out, and thrill at the possibilities. I experience both fear and certainty about the steps I take, both the knowing and the blind ones. I want the soothing night to last forever, and yet I'm eager for the revealing light of dawn. I love this big question I've been living inside of, not even knowing what the question is. And yet...?