Making Sense of the Chaos

 The prompt for Journal 52 this week (HERE) was to create a page about the things you do each day or your favorite part of the day.

I'll be honest, my days are pretty much the same.  Wake up, go to work, come home, make art (which, in my book, includes blogging), go to bed...repeat.  Throw eating and showering in there, and you've described my basic day.  Art is definitely the highlight for me...although eating probably runs a close second...I do enjoy eating...

I don't have a lot of outside excitement in my life...I'm married (so no dating...that ship has both sailed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean), I don't have kids, I don't go a lot of places, I don't have a lot of in-person friends...so my days are pretty much spent in hum-drummery.  I've slowly learned to like most of the aspects of my life as it is...I don't have the stress of dealing with dates/kids/drama...and I'm usually pretty content to be a homebody.  So hum-drum works well enough for me.

Most of the interesting things that occur for me happen internally.  I have an exciting imagination.  Reality tends to be overrated in my estimation.  

The funny part about that is I am one of the most realistic people I know...possibly because my life is full of delusional people...but still...  

Maybe the difference is that I know the things I think about generally won't happen...and other people have hope or fear that they will.  I don't know, I guess I do too...but my mix of pessimistic doubtfulness about good things happening and nonchalance towards bad things happening (worrying changes nothing, so why worry?) keeps my hopes and fears to a mostly hushed whisper.  

But I think about things.  A lot.  All the time.  Over-think.  Sometimes about things that happen (or have happened) in my life, but I think a lot about other people.  I wonder at other people constantly.  What makes them tick?  What are their motives?  Why are they the way they are?  And I play out lives in my head, trying to cipher out just how it is that a person got to be a certain way. 

I do this for my own life too.  I think out the angles of decisions as far into the future and in as many directions as I need to in order to get satisfied.  What if I do this?  What if I don't?  What if this had happened instead of that?

In a way, it makes me feel like a scientist...constantly coming up with new ideas, forming my hypothesis, testing my theories.  I've gotten good at figuring people out.  I think it's part of the reason I find it so devastating to be wrong about a person...because I put a lot of effort into cataloging them.  I want to be able to put a label on people...not in a way that limits them to being one thing, because each person is made up of a million billion different facets (The subtle nuances that make people unique individuals is endlessly fascinating to me.)...but I need to label them to make them something I can understand.  

The more I learn about myself, the more I see that I need a why.  Why am I this way?  Why are you that way?  Why does she do this?  Why won't he do that?  If I can't figure it out, I get very frustrated.  

It's a difficult thing for me to accept, but sometimes the why is not for me to know.  Sometimes there are no labels, nothing to name it, no way of identifying with a situation.  That kills me.  That's the point when I become a little obsessed...because it's not that there isn't a why, it's that I don't get to know it.  And I feel like if I just think a little longer or harder, if I just play out one more scenario, then I'll get the answer.  But that's not always true.  

I have come up with  reasonable theories about things, but the time for proving those theories has passed...and there's not a second chance.  I despise not having my proof.  I loathe not knowing.  

My goal is to understand, to make sense of the various aspects of life...and life is not that way.  Life is mysterious and never as clinical as I'd prefer...life is chaotic.  But I still analyze and I still hypothesize and I still test my thoughts and look for proof...  And somewhere out there, if they knew how I am, I bet there's a person who'd look at me and wonder why it is I do that...and they probably wouldn't understand, because it's part of what makes me mysterious and chaotic and alive.  But, just like me, they'd still try to understand...because, just like me, their favorite part of the day would be when they were able to sense of the chaos. 

My favorite part of the day is when I can make sense of the chaos...