An attempt ...

... at a realistic self-assessment.

Every now and then I get this ungodly strong urge to just purge. Its really hard to describe to someone who is not intimately familiar with this feeling. I know everyone goes through it at some point. But, I would find it hard to believe that most people experience it like I do.

Sometimes, its a purging of place - the wanderlust takes over and I just want to leave where I am at. This could be small or large relocation. A trip outside from my office. Or moving to a new apartment. Or packing everything up and going to a completely different state.

Sometimes its a purging of people - the incessant need to prune out people that are too much effort. Meaning, I do all the work to keep the relationship alive, and it starts to feel unrewarding and unbalanced. So I just stop taking initiative, and they fall right off the face of my earth (usually).

Sometimes its a purging of things - to just throw stuff out. To get rid of real garbage. To get rid of the dumbest things I have saved "Cause I might do something with that some day". To get rid of things that I do not need.

This is generally what it is like to be me - a constant state of flux. Of need for change. Of need for deconstruction and reconstruction. In some way.

 

This year has seen me purging a lot of friends and acquaintances. I always have tons of acquaintances. I rarely have many friends. And this year, Im slowly letting some go. Again - I get tired of doing all the work to make things happen. And I wonder how I can call this a friendship, anyway. And if it is ... then it will come back again.

Surprisingly, I have somewhat started purging some really good friends.

I am thinking about all of this mainly because I just got done messing around on my turntables.

This always feels great. I definitely love messing around on them. But to be honest with myself, I am not sure I love it enough. Meaning that ... I am considering selling them.

Why, you might ask. Especially given that I do love them.

Well, I think the answer is fairly large.

For most of my life, I have excelled at nothing. And I do mean nothing. This is about as universal of a statement I can truly make. But oddly enough this has one special exception. The only thing in this world I am truly phenomenal at:

Being better than average at a boatload of things, and getting there fast. 

This has been my life experience. To get interested in something, decide to try it, and then get surprisingly quick results. After the initial learning curve, everything just tops out and I stagnate. I usually lose passion at this point, or I have found something else (and new) that I am more passionate about learning/doing.

While ambling on this train of thought today, it occurred to me that maybe this goes a little bit beyond genetic predisposition. Perhaps I have taken my natural gift for above-averageness, and perpetuated it by doing one thing consistently:

Not Focusing.

So maybe now is the time to start correcting that. To move in this direction, I would simply need to analyze what I consistently come back to as passions. And what I can potentially foresee myself consistently going back to in the future (cause lets be realistic here, Im not going to *completely* eliminate this tendency).

The goal in doing so would be to elevate my skill in a smaller set of things, at the expense of having a broader set of basic knowledges. Which, in theory, could work.

In practical terms, this would mean selling the turntables. Not because I dont love them. Not because I am not passionate about them in so many ways. But because I am being realistic - I love drawing more; I love playing bass more. I love writing more.

With my natural desires to buy things, a voracious appetite for learning, and my potential for getting swept up in inspiration ... it makes sense why I bought the turntables in the first place. I loved turntablism since the first moment I heard it, but was not able to get any decks until recently. And this was bolstered by a me thing ... seeing someone do something I appreciate and going:

"That is so awesome. I *need* to be doing that right fucking now!"

However, I do not realistically see myself putting in enough time to do the turntables justice. Again, not because I do not love it. But I just do not love doing it *enough* to sacrifice other things.

Its a difficult decision to make. And Im not sure what to do here.

But I really do feel like purging and re-assessing where/how I spend my time would greatly enhance some of my life. Although some of the cold, hard reality of applying this concept makes me 

Sad.