Quiet Thoughts From a Loud Mind

As a kid I used to look up at the stars and wish I lived among them. Beautiful bright specks in the sky looking down seeing and learning from everything on a major scale. A fly on the ceiling of the universe.

I’ve spent my entire life believing it to be a sea of sprinkled spots. Only recently have I realized these aren’t random experiences. Once the universe has decided itself to position things in the right place you start to find patterns of beauty.

Divine shining lights looking and dragging your attention. A mental photograph showing a million stars each with their own story long enough to fill a lifetime. Trying to decode the stars and find your patterns from what you’ve seen sounds like the correct approach right? Dead fucking wrong.

Given enough time you’ll quickly realize those stars you remembered seeing have completely changed. The sky has an entire new picture. Spending your time stuck in the same view will have you in a panic when you realize the entire landscape is a new. That perfect yellow brick road you’d constructed has ran it’s course. You run out of bricks and the entire road is complete changed. Hell, who even builds roads with brick anymore?! Your entire process of construction is dated. Back to square one.

What is there to do when everything you’d believed to be complete is gone?

Let me tell you when your sky is flooded with light the stars in the sky dwindle. You might see only a few left and believe that’s all that exists. That you’ve spent so long that the perfect stars are gone and you’re left with the bold, loud and unsettlingly bright stars blinding you.

That’s where the secret gift of darkness comes in. It’s only in the dark that you can see the more fragile, dimmed lights. When you find that perfect star you’d always wanted to find.

That hits you like a bright ray of sunshine in the morning.
Like an intoxicating smile from across a crowded room.
Jinkies.

You realize that you’d spent all of your time thus far searching for the answers in a situation that had left you behind long ago.

This new dim light; having it’s true beauty shown when in the veil of darkness has been hidden and gone dim itself. But hidden in the dark is a beautiful story worth a million life times. Realize the world has placed you both in a position without the façade of bright lights blinding the quiet and strained.

Mentally getting stuck spiraling at full fucking speed wondering if it’s worth it, or will this just be another picture taken that in time will rot away the same.
Well, that’s the thing. Time is an illusion. All you have is now.

Given how dim you know your light is and how hard to be seen you will be can either weigh you down or build you up. Take the chance to realize you can be better. Building your shine up and becoming what’s meant to be is possible. Your best is enough. Take a chance and reach out. You never know what a little bit of honest communication can manifest.

Fate doesn’t work based on what’s comfortable. It seems to work on its own schedule with its own divine timing.
We’re just along for the ride.

You don’t ever need.
Need to be something for me to make me believe, make me believe.
You make me believe, maybe. ~ Sebastian Paul – Crush

There is that old saying that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Unless you take the shot, it’s useless. Unless you get credit for scoring then the process wasn’t worth it.
It’s really fucking hard to keep playing when the score seems like its 0 – 999 in a race to one thousand. Even after that many shots seemingly coming from every angle at a billion miles an hour it’s not over.

Never a failure, always a lesson. Maybe you learned that you’re really shitty at certain shots. Maybe you learn how to pass the ball and watch your team take breathtaking, time stopping opportunities. The spotlight that we all crave sometimes isn’t meant for us. Sometimes it’s just not the right day and your aim just a little off. Keep adjusting.

At the end of the day who’s to say that the game you’re involved in is even the correct one? Out here playing checkers with a dollar store game. Maybe your color is missing a few pieces and you’re at a disadvantage fighting the unfair game the whole time. Taking a fat L from the start watching this game slowly end and not in your favor. Spending time playing this game while next door is a glass table with ornate gemstone castles and horses. Kings and queens.
Waiting for a new game with a new perspective to find you ready to sit and play. FINALLY the golden opportunity. Gorgeous game all laid out ready. Opponent somehow shimmering like the pieces.
Well what happens when you sit down, knock over the table and glass splinters into a million pieces? When that fragile opposition runs as far as they can.
Back to the checkers, at the very least the game sorta works?

Bad.
Keep trying new rooms. Keep losing games and keep learning your strengths.
Who knows, maybe that very next room is a checker board with all of the pieces. The struggles you went through learning to play without pieces or entire rows of pieces finally paid off. When everything falls in place, eventually even if only for a single round, that’s the shot that makes it.

Toss my pain with my wishes in a wishing well. Still no luck, but oh well.
I still try even though I know i’m gon’ fail. ~ Juice WRLD – Wishing Well

How useless would a road with 3 lanes on one side, and an unpaved dirty road on the other?
I can’t imagine if looking forward you could see the paved side of the road open that you wouldn’t maybe take a second to ride on clean pavement. Your entire vehicle shaking as you ride down your own path what harm does it do to drive in incoming traffic? Especially if they will move 100% over for you.

That closest lane to the edge is filled with gravel and bits that remind you of the treacherous path you were cruising along. What would another lane matter? That extra bit would make your ride so comfortable but at this point the previous lanes that were cruising along are now forced into a single lane backed up in order to make the person traversing the dirt path’s life easier. Maybe helping someone out when they rumble around will get them going! This road doesn’t get much better…

But that’s the thing. Just because you open up space and inconvenience yourself that has no effect on if the person decides to hook a hard right leaving your road. Leaving the back up in their wake. You can watch from line as you’re ages behind where you would’ve been had the road not been closed.

Well now your gas tank is almost at empty and the next gas station is at a risky distance. On the side of the road you can see all of the others pulled over hurt and warming up. They might’ve loved the time on your road but they didn’t ever love it because of you. Just because it was easier.

Oh, and that car you were held up for?
It just took a turn around the trees and you can barely tell but there is a middle finger flying high out the driver side window.

Fuck you, Goodbye.
You hurt me, for the last time. F*CK YOU, GOODBYE – The Kid Laroi

The very hungry caterpillar ate their way through the week.
Day by day they would munch down more and more. Filling up steadily starting to move slower and slower.
The caterpillar kept taking in until it eventually couldn’t handle any more.

Finally instead of consuming what other living organisms provided they looked inside for change. Built a small house and stayed inside. After building the walls and rejecting more intake change occurred and out popped a beautiful butterfly!

Wings stretched out, somehow a completely different color with wild designs that were not present before. The fluttering becomes a performance for the eyes. Flying around past bug zappers and false light it can be difficult to see when they’re flying. The real beauty can only be seen when they decide to land on you. They say that can symbolize that you can be trusted and are in a season of regrowth.

Formerly slow and chained to the ground now finally free to fly. Deciding to float down vulnerably to the ground to show themselves off while you.

However the wings are meant to fly. To finally see a new perspective they’d never known while being fed junk. Giving off the same glow will hopefully bring your butterfly back. Keep hope that every day or so they come around because of your light. If the butterfly comes back just know how deeply meaningful that is.

There is comfort in knowing that you’re more than just a place to have landed. You’re a place worth returning to.
Infinite landing places and onlookers to gaze yet somehow you’ve warmed up this butterfly enough they’re free to let loose and find comfort in the glow you radiate.
That’s honestly the best feeling.

Butterflies are fucking gorgeous.

Losing control now, fighting the truth trying to hide, but I think it’s alright. – Russ ~ Losin Control

To the one who taught me isolation, I forgive you.

When you find that perfect bar. The one where you can walk in with a book and a $20 and get a few beers and pizza delivered from next door and read or write. That comfortable nook outside of distractions.
Jackie knew that I would want to try the new IPA they’d drunkly crafted one night. She knew i’d tip and give some of that perfect exclusively cheese pizza.
The way the doggo would run up to me and waggle her but because she gave my seal of approval on the butt scritches.
Dropping off wine, fresh popcorn from the theater and for your parents to have date night.
We talked about mental health that night on our drive home.
You told me my issues were fake. That it couldn’t compare to yours.
Oooof.

Then..


Vanished.


Those places and people were instant history.

“Coffee?”
“Sure”

Fourteen days later I sat across from someone i’d not met before.
In the flesh you were the same, but your eyes had dulled. It wasn’t until half way through my coffee and five minutes of being told how miserable you were and I saw his name come up on your phone.

You continued to talk and saw me laugh to myself.
Asking me, what’s so funny???

I stood and left.
There is no why. Just what next.
Sometimes you don’t need to know the facts to know what’s goin on.

My ghost, where’d you go?
What happened to the soul that you used to be? ~ Ghosts – Halsey

Through life i’ve found that keeping myself a safe distance from anything too real would some how keep me safe.
Imagine for a second if Frodo never took the ring. If he had a taste and said “eh fuck it this seems too real”. That story would’ve not only not had a conclusion… that story wouldn’t have any substance. Just another person too afraid of the possibilities.

All too often it seems the negatives outweigh the positives simply because they exist.

How unfair is it to assume that if someone see’s the inside of our house they will hate the color of the walls? Hate the decor? Hate the TMNT arcade machine? It’s super unfair. For sure if you bring enough people in you’ll get some, MAYBE even most people that don’t like what they see. We focus on those people rather than entertaining the idea that something positive could come out of those who enjoy what they see and belong inside of your tiny box.

I suppose it’s worth opening that box up and letting people in. Hell, maybe the light will do ya some good.

Have faith in me
‘Cause there are things that I’ve seen I don’t believe – A Day To Remember ~ Have Faith in Me

You must grow up to be a strong man.
You must grow up to be a leader.
You must grow up and find a good woman.
You must grow up and get married to her.
You must grow up and have kids.
You must grow up and have a house with a fence.
You must grow up.
You must.

This is all with the assumption that the remedial things we see everyday are promised the next. That the pursuit of this goal established in a set date of history will be met. Oh so very rarely do things go as assumed. It’s really up to each of us to create our own story.

Fuck a naritive. Fuck assumptions.
Learning to have fun every day with every interaction is the real beauty.

Everyone really says they live life by the day.
BUT we all plan and have ideas in our head to calm anxieties. We place all of our ideas and thoughts into tiny convenient boxes to convince ourselves we know how to handle it. How often have you heard people unaware of situations because they felt differently?
Seems that’s a prime example of how we’ve set limits on everything. Everyone can go just so far. Everyone can do JUST enough.

Don’t let yourself be eaten alive by what the people say.
People will talk and have opinions. Prove them wrong by being your best self.

Remember one day all communication could be lost.
What could’ve been will eat you alive much more than the embarrassment of making a fool of yourself.

I’m happy just because,
I found out that I am really no one. At the Bottom of Everything – Bright Eyes

To the one who taught me vulnerability if I could, I would forgive you.

Why is it that massive castles last to this day? Security.

Castles built with giant walls. Huge boulders that would’ve taken a team to move. Just to keep safe. One brick and a time with carefully measured walls.
Once you get the wall a certain height.
A certain width.
A certain density of material.
Several layers.
No chance anyone can get past those can they?

Spoiler alert: After enough hammering and battering even the toughest of materials crack. Once the walls are opened what do you do?

Whatever is large enough to break those massive doors has got to be one hell of a giant monster or a massive army surely you can’t fight back. Maybe falling back to a deeper layer. One that has pathways rarely traversed. A thick labyrinth of halls time has all but forgotten exist in the first place.

Hell even that isn’t going to stop a bulldozer hell-bent on reaching the core.
Once that seed is planted, once someone has devoured every inch of defense, all that is left to do is give in.

Once everything you’ve worked for is gone all that’s left is a shell of what you’d accomplished only you weren’t the one making calls anymore.

Sooner than you’d ever know you’re kept prisoner. Stuck in a mental bind now that what was previously your hidden treasures have fiddled with and moved about.

Turning around to notice the sliver of light coming in the door some times is all the distraction we need to open our hidden sanctum and peak curiosity.

Walking down the dark hidden halls plastered with abstract art others couldn’t possibly understand being left behind you to rot with their memories. Out the giant front door as light blinds you.

When your nose tickles and smells of life hit you.
When you hear the constant traffic of the world moving.
When you feel the heat radiate off your skin.
When you can almost taste the dirty air of country roads.
When you see the changing and building of massive skyscrapers in the skyline while you hid in your shack of a castle. A tiny speckle in the grand plan of it all.

So I bare my skin and I count my sins and I close my eyes and I take it in.
And i’m bleeding out. ~ Imagine Dragons – Bleeding Out

To the one who taught me heartbreak, I forgive you.

Learning to solve a rubik’s cube you start by learning to complete a single side of one color. Before you begin the colors are jumbled up and there are no solid sides. You’re essentially left looking at a mess of color. You can twist and turn and maybe get a hint of colors added up but let me tell you the feeling of completing your first complete side is monumental.
Finally. You’ve learned what it looks like.
What a tiny glimpse will be.

All of those incomplete sides suddenly become adjustments.
Those adjustments become beautiful solidarity of color.

Until someone someone decides they don’t like that and takes your cube and rearranges it into chaos.

I wept when the perfection I had created in my mind was destroyed. When no matter how much effort I had put in. It didn’t matter that i’d spent time learning every move. Figuring out how to up my speed.
In the end it doesn’t matter. Nothing is forever.

Don’t let the thrill of success blind you from the goal.
Anyone can pick something up, give a few turns and show you a single completed side.
If it’s worth your time hold it in your hands. Treasure it. Evaluate all of the mismatched colors and love how perfectly random it is.

Let yourself be changed by others. You never know what beautiful color arrangements are hiding a few twists and turns away.

When I see your face, there’s not a thing that I would change. ‘Cause you’re amazing ~ Bruno Mars – Just the Way You Are

Late night storms with the crackling thunder rolling in seconds after the strike of lightning illuminated the sky. That second to last windshield wiper speed setting kind of night. Rain slapping the glass and reflecting sings off the pools. That’s tonight.
Not the time for music, just a slow ride with the sound of the rain falling and the buzz of the engine.

I was greeted quickly by scared yelps and bowed head.
Perspective is everything. While I had an amazing ride home elsewhere fear had set in. Honestly it’s overlooked but taking a second to remind yourself that this journey sucks for us all.

Hamp curled up next to me anxious and wiggling. I realized that the man had to go pee something crazy. However, he’s afraid of the world too. I hope that didn’t wear off on him…

That same storm had died down a bit and in tshirt and boxers I walked out with him pushing against the back of my leg. The rain quickly soaking me while I walked with him over towards a tree which he rushed at. As he peed hidden under his tiny tree I was overcome with radiating light and happiness. Soaked socks and a wet t-shirt contest winning look going on I couldn’t have been more excited for him.

Walking back inside and drying us both off with the towels he scooted up close to me and exhaled. That was the exact moment I realized how much I loved again. It’s not some bullshit excuse to try and be a better friend or a better sidekick. It’s a genuine desire to overcome together.
To embrace their shortcomings.


Well, I’d jumped from my tree
and i’d a danced like the king of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would ‘a fared well. – The Shins