Operation Achieve Anything: Day Seventy-Three, Dateline 3-14-2018
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“The most precious gift we can offer is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
Good morning Crickets. Welcome to day number seventy-three of Operation Achieve Anything. Yesterday, I didn’t quite finish the assignment I was writing about from the day before since I was asked to determine whether I was a skeptic or an idealist after only exploring the skeptical side myself. I found it odd that the book asked me to come to a conclusion at that point considering yesterday’s assignment was to explore my idealistic side. I mean, why wouldn’t you wait until both sides were explored before coming to a conclusion?
So, that’s why I made the executive decision to hold off sharing my final thoughts until after I share my finding from yesterday’s assignment that I’m about to share right now. For this assignment, I was supposed to explore my idealistic side by sharing my daydreams about the life I want to live. As you read this, keep in mind, the assignment doesn’t want me to ground these fantasies in reality, so, some of the things that I am about to share would be impossible to achieve.
The biggest daydream that preoccupies my mind is somewhat achievable. I would love to live in an underground Blast From The Past-style bomb shelter that’s big enough to contain a small, but not tiny, one room, studio apartment sized house with the rest of the shelter designed to look like the outside world. I’d have a duplicate house that could be found above ground making the underground abode more of a basement than a shelter.
This dwelling would be completely off the grid so that it would be possible for me to focus on making improvements to my writing until the day that I die without being distracted by the outside world. This “bomb shelter” would be more of a place to hide than any sort of survivalist home that’s prepped for the end of the world. In this dream, the above ground house would be in the middle of nowhere, so, the underground option would also provide a panic room of sorts for when I get too freaked out by nature.
Even if I never end up getting the bomb shelter of this dream, I’d still love to live in a cabin out in the woods in order to not just write but work of creating other forms of art while I decompress from city living for so long. I think this drive to escape stems from the fact that I lived most of my life as an introvert in denial. In my youth, I tried so hard to be extroverted that I think I even tricked myself.
Since I’m stuck with this life and can’t perform the hypothetical action of going back to change anything, I don’t regret my chaotic past but now I just want to settle in. Not in a nine-to-five white-picket-fence sort of way but in a way that is settling to me which unfortunately means long periods of isolation so that I can work through my thoughts without being distracted by other needs.
This may sound very selfish but, I feel like I have very little time left on this world and since I have no kids to pass on my legacy, I’d like to leave the world my written work after taking it all past the first draft. It’s going to take a lot of time and focus to get everything where it needs to be and this has always felt like the ideal situation to turn this plan into a reality.
I’d also like to live under the ocean in a clear room that nanobots build from their poop after eating garbage from the plastic island that’s floating around the Pacific Ocean and is the size of Texas. These plastic pooping nanobots would also create a tunnel system that would connect the entire world while cleaning up the ocean.
I figure if I lived in a world where I figured out how to develop this sort of device, I’d probably be able to figure out an almost magical power source that also uses resources that would otherwise be considered waste in order to clean things up and cut all energy bills down to nothing. In this extreme fantasy world, I’d continue to invent things that would take care of everyone’s basic needs so that we as a species could get past our resource hoarding phase and start working together to educate and create instead of constantly starting new wars.
So, there you have a somewhat obtainable dream as well as one that is over-the-top, fulfilling today’s assignment where I was supposed to explore my idealistic belief. Now that I’ve explored this as well as my skeptic beliefs, it’s now time to answer the question that I neglected yesterday when the book asked and I a skeptic or idealist.
The answer is….
I’m neither and both since I feel I’m actually a realist. I feel that I’m extremely idealistic in my head until the realist part of me reminds me that I live in a reality where I really should be more skeptical which can sometimes send me over the edge until the realist in me that things also aren’t as bad the media directs me to see it.
I’d like to say that the realist in me creates balance but it’s more of a fulcrum that allows me to seesaw back and forth between the two extreme while also acting as a reminder that there is a center sense of being. I think part of this back and forth comes from living with a bipolar head but I’ve also spent so much of my life writing that whether or not I am any good, I’ve experienced multiple lives between the one that I literally live and the lives that play out in my head.
Alright, so that takes care of the last two assignment, now let’s get into today’s, where once again, I’m asked to ponder a concept rather than have anything specific to work on. Today, I’m supposed to practice being mindful while paying attention to the results. I hate these lessons because what does that really mean. Yeah, the lesson explains that it’s talking about blocking out thoughts of the past and the future in order to live in the now which is a nice sentiment but hard to put into practice, homework assignment style.
Oh well, we’ll see how I end up dealing with this when I check in tomorrow with my next update. Until then, it’s now that time for me to say, good day and good luck to you and all of your project.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
