This is part of my Meditation Journal (click) which includes dozens of posts.
This past year, 2013, has been rather torturous.
I’ve never felt more lost. I don’t know what to focus on to make a living. I have many things I’m competent at, and nothing I am an expert at. I usually don’t include meditation when I think about what I could be doing with my time, with my effort, to help solidify the future for my family – my wife and daughter.
And yet, one by one, the options of what I can do are disappearing.
Over my entire life I’ve asked myself the question – “What can you do better than anyone?”
I figure that is what I should be focusing on. Why waste time with anything else. And yet still, I can’t seem to focus on the thing(s) I am very good at. The things I’m expert at.
I can do photography pretty well. I guess I’m an expert. I’m competent, I’m fully knowledgable about most topics in the field of photography. I know the technical bits, I know the design, the art of photography. I know what it takes to make great images. I very rarely am inspired to go do so. I just don’t care about it that much. Hardly at all really. There are brief moments when I’m inspired, but it passes quickly.
I can shoot video well enough to get a lot of views on Youtube. Being in Thailand helps. There are lots of strange subjects to shoot videos about. I have 18,000,000 views at my Youtube channel. I could focus on that in 2014. I get inspired in brief spurts to do so – and then it goes away, like everything else.
It is the same for everything.
Meditation has been a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, it has calmed my mind. ADD/ADHD are pretty much a thing of the past. They very rarely affect me at all anymore. I can say that after decades of it affecting me horribly, I now have peace of mind. I have my mind back. In a way that is good. I can focus on projects for hours, days, weeks at a time when I’m motivated to do so.
I’m just not motivated to complete any big project like a book, a movie script, a website focused on some topic. I find that I just don’t have the motivation to do it. There is very little I care about any longer.
What I do care about, doesn’t seem to be areas of focus that will lead to me making a living from them.
My family. I don’t know how to monetize my family.
Trail running. I love it. I do it every chance I get – couple times a week. I wish I could live in the western USA and run many of the races there. I just can’t get any sort of major income source to allow me to do that. I fear getting a job and working for someone else because I’ve spoiled myself working on my own for the last 7 years.
Who can give me a job that compares favorably with that?
Meditation. Jhana. Abhinna. I’ve already written two books on meditating. One is doing OK, the other has sold about 5 books in total. It’s funny, the book I put the most thought into, the most time into, the most that I could possibly fit into a book – is the one that sold 5 copies. It’s ludicrous, but goes to show you how publishing books works online. It either works, or it doesn’t. I have 26 books published online. I am not excited at all about publishing any more.
When I really look myself square in the face and ask – “What is the one thing you are expert at that few other people can do as well?”
The answer is meditation. The answer is – reach Jhana. The answer is – experience Abhinna?.
At least I have in the past.
Whether past success is indicative of future success is anyone’s guess, but I just don’t care much about that topic either. It’s so nebulous. I can’t really see it clearly to define it as a meaningful topic to delve into. The experiences were phenomenal, sure. What if I were able to have Abhinna experiences again? What then?
I don’t know. I don’t see any point in them. My experiences before weren’t so general that I could fascinate people with them. They were personal and involved knowledge about my family mostly. They were not that strong that I could call them up at will. They came when they wanted.
What I have left as a result of meditation years ago, is that this mind has stopped when I am not prodding it to do something. There is a profound silence when I’m not doing anything.
There is a non-attachment to nearly everything except the few things I mentioned… my family, and exercise really. I can’t think of anything else that means anything to me.
Disenchantment has hit full-on.
Anyway, so gradually it appears that disenchantment is taking away everything that could have been a possibility to focus on. If I could focus on my family or exercise, and make a living, make a career out of that, I would do it. I don’t see how that could possibly happen. So I sit here and I’m empty.
I can’t come up with anything else.
Meditation, Jhana, Abhinna – these could maybe be the answer. Still, I’m not motivated in the least to do anything with them. I’m not able to see a way they could provide a job focus for me. A career. Something that would give my family more stability.
And so it goes…
2014… I do hope something profound happens. I’m not expecting it to come from inside me. Seems like it has to come from outside me.
Best of luck and life to you and yours – and I hope your new year is the best of years!!!
Metta,
Vern