The wheat from the chaff

Is it enough to just enjoy life, not feel the need to accomplish something?  In my case, probably not, though I'd rarely be mistaken for a Type A personality.  But now that I'm in Thailand, I have the niggling thought that I need to create, to dive inside, put some things together, write some lyrics, come up with something new, in a word, to create.  So I'll sit down here with basically nothing to say, and see if anything emerges.

And right away, I have the realization that the true creation comes from honesty... and as long as I'm wanting to censor my thoughts, not reveal too much, it's as though there is a filter on the source of the magic.  Hmmm it's quite the dilemma.  And I'm not the first one to face it.  But in the past, I've been burned by revealing too much, speaking too candidly.  But maybe that's not true either, though it seemed like it at the time.

A couple of years ago I was writing quite honestly about a relationship with my Thai girlfriend, the ups and the downs, the drinking, the 'connection', the love, the money, the whole experience.  It was therapeutic for me, and entertaining for my few readers.  But there were some repercussions down the line.  For one, the woman (former Facebook friend) who runs the stage I played on at Country Fair, came to the conclusion that I couldn't be a 'kids entertainer' and write about adult stuff, and she used that as a major reason why I didn't get the gig I had been used to in the past.  I thought it was a totally bullshit move on her part... especially where she said that she showed my blog to some other folks from the fair and they all agreed with her perception.  Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy, not one of those folks would have had any possibility of reading what I wrote, other than for the fact of her sharing it, and then to use that as a pretext... like I say, 'bullshit move'.  Like I say, 'former Facebook friend'.

And along the same lines, but more understandably... I had a relationship going with a woman in Eugene last year, and she was fine with me going to Thailand for the winter.... until she started reading the blog from the previous year... and that freaked her out and she was convinced that I was 'still in love with M' and that was the end of that.  She couldn't deal with that thought, even though I had broken up with M in order to keep things clean and neat for the new relationship... or so I thought.  It was another example of the one-plus-one equals zero theory that I have about relationships.  Oh so true in this case.

But in retrospect, did I really need that Country Fair gig?  No I didn't... it had run its course and I don't miss that Bacchanal in July.  And was that relationship going to survive?  No it wasn't, as there was a 'communication' issue throughout the months and that would have crushed it eventually.  This was just a shortcut to the inevitable end.  Not a pleasant one, to be sure, but whatever, it was the right thing.

The point being that maybe my thought that I got 'burned' by revealing too much is incorrect.  Maybe it actually helped me separate the wheat from the chaff.