I am struggling.  It would be difficult, if not dishonest, for me to say anything other than recently for me life has become nothing more than going through the motions.  The provider within me conquers the artist and rebel thereby limiting the risk of exposure to protect myself, The Kids, my friends and family, my career, and even my reputation.  All other considerations are suppressed so that I might focus on the primary goal of protecting and providing.

It is disheartening that my priorities have focused on remaining within the safe place I built for myself.  Despite its relative security, that place is no longer positive.  The provider subjugates all other considerations.  It stifles my creativity, subdues my desire and ability to live, smothers my relationships, and silences my passions.  As risks became greater than the refuge I built, I was forced to retreat into that same shelter and forbear true happiness in lieu of survival.

My focus now is on things that pay the bills.  I have allowed my job to eat away at my soul.  Trapped within the mechanics of life, my creativity languishes in despair, and therein lies the strangulation of contentment.  No energy remains for activities that enrich my spirit.  All such ability is consumed by acts dedicated to putting food on the table, ensuring there is shelter from the night, and otherwise maintaining the constructs of subsistence.

Somehow, the risks became greater than the sanctuary I created and began chipping away at living, so the enjoyment of it all was wounded and my welfare compromised.  I am no longer risky.  This failing now harms my soul and the joy that once encapsulated me.  I sacrificed the greatness I strived for in undeniable acts of self-betrayal.  I denied my own dreams and my own elation.

To be happy involves taking chances.  It also includes finding that niche within our society wherein we can survive while living — really living.  I have done neither of those things lately but have instead allowed my job to rend control from my grasp.  Cliché as it sounds, my life has always revolved around the axiom that I do not live to work but instead work to live.  In recent months, my entire life has been about work.  I cannot help but feel that I have murdered some part of me, or at least I have stood by and watched it murdered by my career.  It is shameful.

Wholehearted investment of my soul is a precursor to enjoying life, and without it, I can only persist as an automaton of capitalism.  My desire to be happy is betrayed.  I see The Kids and tell myself I cannot risk their well-being or my own, that I must continue in slavery to a job I despise if I am to ensure our survival, but surviving is not living, and I have denied myself a life in order to be safe, and this is disheartening.

My job consumes most of my time.  This disallows sufficient freedom to search for another job, work on my writing, spend time with friends and family, adequately focus on The Kids, and generally participate in the world around me.  Even my blogging has suffered under the cruel hand of this assailant because my creativity and energy to invest both have been trampled underfoot.  The stress alone is unbearable, every fiber of my being suffused with it, and the only challenge I feel is in getting from day to day without screaming too much.  Inundated by guilt, I use what little time I can find to satisfy the needs and desires of others in my life.  Only I am to blame for the denial of my own gladness and the lack of satisfaction in my own existence.

I now do very little which interests me.  I fail to engage in activities which are different or which might challenge my inner self, and this includes my writing, something that means the world to me, something in which I find great satisfaction, and something which I had hoped would save me from the doldrums of common life.  How can I be interesting if I lack interest?  I have become average — less than average, perhaps — and have wounded my heart and soul and mind through sacrifices to the uncaring, uninterested, unhappy, and unworthy.  I have lost my way, and therefore I have lost myself.

I wallow in misery and call it unavoidable so that I might wallow in more misery, and I justify it by asking how else it could be if my kids and I are to survive.  Once impassioned of extraordinary zeal for living, the mundane now shrouds me in darkness, carving in my path the rut in which I find myself trapped.  There was a time when I recognized the agony of such plodding.  I suspect it has become so commonplace for me that now I fail to see my own anguish and sorrow, yet it keeps me awake at night, robs me of the ambition that once drove me, and subjugates the inherent drive to live — and I mean to really live, not just getting through the hours by rote action.

I hate what I have become.  I am the reverberating barker of corporate mantras that inhibit creativity and achievement.  My soul is bruised and battered by its own sacrifices under the feet of those who would achieve only through stepping on others.  Living now gives way to the agony of joyless repetition.  My own quest is consumed by mediocrity.  After giving so much, I am asked to give more of myself, but even now very little remains to be given, and I cannot help but feel that only desolation and solitude can be found in that direction.  I ran the race and gave my all, yet what do I have to show for it?  I feel that I have run full circle and am now back where I began.

I am working in a thankless job that consumes all energy and passion.  I have insufficient time to focus on my writing, the outlet of my creativity and passion through which I find escape, pride, redress, and contentment.  I am unfulfilled and struggling.  I face growing self-doubt.  Honesty requires I admit that I even face more than a little self-loathing.  Time is a commodity I cannot maintain in sufficient quantity.  I feel defeated and sad.

I am ashamed that I feel these things because in my heart I am completely aware that it could be worse — much worse.  I am employed.  I have friends and family who love me and who I love.  I have The Kids and their unmitigated devotion, love and companionship.  I am financially stable and relatively healthy.  I have a car that is completely paid for.  I have a roof over my head.  I have food to eat.  What could I possibly complain about?  Therein exists the guilt and my reluctance to even discuss this.  I surely must be a crybaby for wallowing in my own self-pity and the squalor of opportunities lost.

Yet the fact that I have lost my way is irrefutable.  I feel as though I have failed in some way and that circumstances conspire to inhibit me from lifting myself out of this personal oubliette.  The unavoidable, brutal truth is that I am enslaved at present by survival.  Imprisoned by my own need to maintain living standards and shelter for my kids and myself, I have fallen into a furrow of self-imposed agony.

It cannot be an easy thing to rip oneself from such a rut.  A long and painful process is involved, one of sacrifice and reward, risk and opportunity, and one that dares not promise success while simultaneously tempting me with what might be.  There is no other way to get where I need to be or to do the things I want to do.  Both mind and heart comprehend that there can be no other path to fire my passions.  Part of my soul is dead having been assassinated by my own inability to risk that which must be risked in order to make life worth living again.  I have played it safe to ensure I could provide for survival needs.  That has in turn bred despair and unhappiness.  Now I feel like a failure.

I know I am capable of turning the situation around, of taking control again and steering my life toward the goals that will fulfill my happiness while addressing the whims of the provider within me.  It is a dangerous and precarious line to walk, a delicate balancing act between living and surviving, yet it is a journey I must take, and I must take it soon if I am to avoid the inevitable downward spiral into depression that must surely be the result of my current path.  I am not a defeatist regardless of having been defeated.  Transforming this into success filled with the joys of living is an absolute and non-negotiable decision.

I must refocus on my writing.  I must escape the torment of my current job.  I must dive back into life and reinvigorate my soul.

The fear is palpable.  I worry that a hasty jump may well endanger stability.  Nevertheless, I cannot deny that life as it exists now is unbearable, a desolate land that is uninhabitable.  Devoting myself to those pursuits that will satisfy the hunger within my soul is an act of being, and it is necessary — absolutely necessary.  I somehow have to find a way beyond where I am.  My journey must change and progress down a different path, I know, and it must happen soon.

I must needs return to what is good and joyous in life.  I cannot survive without such.  I cannot survive the way things are, the way they have become.  Life is too acerbic now.