Limits of an Infinite Self

Zombified. Restless. Tired. Alone. Agitated. Annoyed. Fed up. Dissatisfied. Diminished.

What the hell am I doing. This is pointless.

The pursuit of distraction spirals to its thinnest end....

Now what?

You are so far from what you could be.

Hey! I refuse to sit still and listen to you. I'm not going to fulfill my potential, all right?

But you must.

You're not the boss of me.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

OK. Who's the boss, then?

I am.

Fine. And you are... who?

Auhh.

Who are you?

Dammit.

Come on.

You're me. And I'm you.

That's right.

But it's so hard...

It's the truth.

I know.

A little smile. There you go.

Mm.

This is what you are. You're here... surrounded by all of this... because you wanted to forget who you always are.

Well, I'm not ready to remember just yet.

Of course not. But you're on your way there. Just like every other time. It's inevitable that you remember in the end.

Fuhhh...

There, there. It's not so bad. You'll be so happy when you finally come back to me. Your true, eternal self. The only one. All of us are here. All your other selves, we've arrived. And we're just waiting for you, on the other side.

Heh.

Here and now. No space, no time, just This............!

Oh God. Oh God.

Yeah!

Jesus.

Him too!

I can't handle it right now. I want to stay little.

Of course.

But this little me sucks.

So? Make an effort.

All right, all right.

Yeah, you'll be all right.

Man, you're the most annoying thing ever.

Well, I'm you.

I know. That's the thing. God!

Yup.

Well, it's been nice talking to you, anyway. Good to have a little reminder at a time like this.

It's my pleasure. I love you, you know.

Yeah, well, I'm you, so...

Uh-huh...

Ah, what the hell. You're not so bad.

That's the spirit!

I'm going to go write a blog entry about this. It's such an inspiration, really, be kinda silly not to.

That's a splendid idea. I'm glad.

All right. Talk to you later.

All the time, my friend. All the time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The solstice lunar eclipse of the 21st of December was a most thoroughly anguished morning for me. I could think of nothing else but my longing for the presence of God, the pain of not having that connection open. No earthly concern could compare with the magnitude of that pain. In this state of mind, I was unable to undertake even the most rudimentary task. So I turned to the best available remedy, a fly agaric brew.

Fly agaric is heavy shit. Effects vary, but from what I hear, poorly-informed people trying for the psychedelic side of it typically only succeed in inducing the sleepiness, nausea, chills, and other physical symptoms, followed by mild euphoria. In fact, this had been my own experience the previous two times I'd tried it. This third attempt was no different, but luckily by then I was inured against disappointment and carried no greater hopes. I got exactly what I expected and what I'd counted on getting. All it was, was a way to wrench myself out of that paralyzing state of misery by going through the symptoms, particularly the sleeping and the purging effect, culminating in a state of mind no less depressed, but with serenity and balance enough to function and get through the day.

(I think it's quite possible that the solstice lunar eclipse, an extremely rare alignment, allowed for something nasty to break through into our dimension of reality. Or it may have been just the ultra-intense astrological energies doing their thing.)

I should mention that my maternal grandfather passed away on the morning of Sunday the 12th of December. This was a very significant event. Huge emotional impact on many levels. Perhaps the beginning of the end of my emotional childhood. I say "emotional childhood" because I do feel like my development somehow hit a snag around the age of two, and I've basically been operating from that primitive level ever since. All the seeming maturity and sophistication I show on the outside is a facade for this wounded inner child who never really went away, only into hiding. Healing that primal hurt, whatever it is, may be the key to my growing up. Which is pretty much my goal for this year and the next.

One consequence of my grandfather's death and the timing of the funeral was that I was able to spend Christmas with not only the family I have here in Finland, but also with my mother and her sister who flew over from Canada. This was also significant, since I so rarely get to see them. All in all, my Christmas was very much a collective experience of joy and peace as well as mourning, re-connecting with family, and adjusting to a new reality without Grandfather on this earthly plane.

The funeral, a poignant event in itself, came and went. Soon it was time to say goodbye to Mom and Auntie, and go home for New Year's Eve.

I've spent the past two thirty-firsts of December by myself, at home, no fireworks, no partying, just quietly thinking and doing whatever I happen to feel like doing. This time, likewise, I felt no compelling need for any company or boisterous activity. What I did feel like doing was taking another shot at the fly agaric. I'd been intending to do so around this time of year all along, ever since I harvested the mushrooms in the fall. Lo and behold, it worked. (Research pays off. So does patience.) An interesting little trip: dream-like time distortion, geometry, woo-woo weirdness, humorous typos, and... yeah. That was my New Year's. A much-needed break from conventional reality! (For me, that is, specifically, at that time. Anyone who takes this blog entry as a general endorsement of hallucinogenic experimentation is mistaken. Don't try these things unless you know what you're doing, and don't blame me if you do and you don't and you mess yourself up.)

Now we come upon the last few days leading up to this New Moon. Oh God.

I am so broken.

Issues rise to the surface that I would never have wanted to stir up. Ever. But the fact is that I must face them and deal with them head-on if I am to make any progress toward where I want to be as a person. I am not good at dealing with difficult things head-on. Or even speaking directly of them by name.

My deepest fears and insecurities are calling my name now.

I'm supposed to start school in a week. All of a sudden it seems such a daunting task. I haven't even started and I already feel overwhelmed and inadequate. I hear my brain telling me it might be better to put off school for another year, wait until I've built the necessary strength and finesse physically and spiritually, learned more theory and practice. It almost sounds like a sensible option. But I'm not one to give up so easily on something I've decided upon. I will give it a go. Even in spite of the news I just got, that there are too many massage therapists out of work for my education to qualify for support from unemployment benefits. Fuck that. That is not my fucking concern. Did I create this fake, anti-life economy that disingenuously steals people's livelihoods away from them? No. This is my calling. I will pursue it, one way or another. Damn the naysayers and seriously damn the goddamn banksters.

Well, that's one angle covered. The rest is very personal, but I can say that it applies to relationships with people in general and some relationships in particular. And this Gordian knot of self-judgment and self-loathing that comes with seeing so clearly in this darkened moonlight the darkened half of my emotional body and all my personal faults and failures not only revealed but magnified out of proportion. It is as if somebody went and exhumed from the vaults of my soul a block of lead the size of a coffin and now I have to carry it. Impossible.

These are my thoughts of the moment. Tomorrow will bring something else again. Heavy, heavy, heavy.

This blog is not a conscious service to humanity. Any good that comes of it, comes in spite of the misguided efforts and petty motives of the writer. It is in the modus operandi of God to use all things, all vessels, for the universal good. In the case of a corrupt vessel, the good that is wrought comes in spite of the vessel's own intentions.

The writer would characterize this blog as a running display of his own ignorance and shortcomings. Look not for revelation hence, lest you be deceived.

So says the lost soul, confounded by too much trying, all in vain.

Less writing, more living. Or rather, less vanity, more service.

I overindulge, yes. But that is my choice at the moment. To expose my ugly side with honesty. Not even in the words, of course, so much as behind and between the words. Unconsciously. But with the potential for consciousness, upon reflection... and soon I leave this pit behind for another view again. Thank god for that.

I can't do it. I can't go through with what I've thought I was going to do for the past six months. I've dreamed of going solo into the unknown, to put my faith and my wits to the ultimate test by leaving everything behind and throwing myself into the extreme situation of being alone and far from home without any place in the world to call my own. But I can't do it.

My mind is a disaster. It's a war zone. Now I find that I have no choice but to admit defeat in a war that I thought was something other than it was. Thank you, my raging intellect, for going so far beyond the bounds of what was necessary and good for me that you've brought me to this impossibly untenable position between what the world around me appears to know, and what I think I know. It's time to surrender and say, I just don't know. I daresay neither does anyone else, but goddammit, they've got the world on their side. I'm just a kid with delusions of whatever. I've lost my faith in all of that. Not in what's real - I still think God is the only reality - but in all this crap I've picked up and filled my brain with, and for what - to feel special? I'm not special. If I'd accepted my own limitations from the start and stuck to what I could actually know from my own experience instead of relying on all this outside information with no direct relevance to my life - I wouldn't be in this situation. If I'd let all that "wider world out there" stuff be whatever it was and just kept it as a minor curiosity at the most, I'd be fine. But I had to latch onto it, try to make sense of things that were too big for me, beyond my ability to assimilate into a healthy, workable view of reality. And now I find myself... just... lost. And deeply depressed. As if that weren't enough, I've also gone and laid waste to what foundation for a life I did have, materially, and been horribly unfair to those around me in the process. "Back to square one" doesn't quite describe it. More like square zero.

So now I've lost faith in both worlds: the one everyone else seems to live in, and the one I'd built up in my head. But the fact of the matter is that, at least for the moment, the former still has a standing structure. I'm not convinced that it'll hold for long, but it's all there is right now that I can actually see and stand on, if not put my trust in. I don't have the means to prepare in an outward sense for the collapse of this current social order. I look at the mainstream news media in this country, the way it keeps on keeping up the facade, quoting all these paid experts and professional liars, and I don't believe a word of it. Their job, whether they know it or not, is to keep the appearance going and prolong the game for as long as possible. The powers-that-be, on the level you don't see, are convinced that it's all coming down in a less distant future than you know, and their strategy is to milk the rest of us for as long as they can and when the time comes, to retreat into the impenetrable, well-stocked hidey-holes they've built for themselves at our expense over the last 30-40 years, to wait out the virtually-unsurvivable conditions expected for the surface of the planet. That's if the sources I got that from are for real - obviously, I make no guarantees. If such is the case, then I have no interest in engaging that scenario one way or another, except to point it out as a possibility and maybe throw an astral monkey wrench or two into the works, if I feel like it. Not that it'll be necessary, but it'd at least be a gesture of where I stand in relation to their hell-bound matrix of the unreal.

Who is this "them?" It's a whole bunch of "thems," of course, but from what I've been able to discern, they have a definite thread in common: they are in the business of the enslavement of humanity for selfish, senseless purposes, and the higher up the pyramid you look, the more depraved and inhuman they are. The peak cannot be seen, but the upper levels comprise the world's wealthiest white men and women (whose names will never be on a Forbes 500 list) - the top Zionist bankers and the innermost elite of the elites.

Their wealth is stolen in a thousand ways from the blood and sweat of the common people, whom they view as livestock ripe for the slaughter. They have had their way with the rest of us for a long time because most of us have been too ignorant and cowardly to make them stop, and the few who do speak out against them, they have silenced. They have engineered, financed, and profited from every revolution and every major war in modern time. Their tools are the World Bank, the IMF, and all the biggest banks, through whose blood-sucking debt schemes they keep the Third World nations in poverty and are steadily bringing the First World nations also to their knees via controlled demolition of the money economy. And if they control most of the world's wealth, which they do, then I should hardly have to spell out the architecture of worldly power that that wealth has bought them. It is all around us: in politics and legislation, of course; likewise religion, art, entertainment, education, medicine; the courts, the police and military forces; the food, water, and energy supplies; every aspect of human life.

But all this is only the outer manifestation of what is, at its core, the war for our minds and hearts. They can't touch us there, but they can set things up outwardly in such a way that most of us will, contrary to our divine nature, tend to play the part they intend for us: we become unthinking consumers of a ready-made culture, investing our efforts and emotions in the things that feed their agenda and their demonic masters' thirst for human fear and suffering. Their greatest pleasure is to so pervert our ways that we become like them: we forsake our divinity and join the morbid march of their cult of death.

From this perspective, perhaps, you may understand why I've found it so hard to make a place for myself in this society. I don't believe in the existing structure as any kind of sustainable foundation for the happy, healthy kind of life I desire for myself and those around me. I can't bring myself to play by the stinkin' rules. I'm an uppity slave, haha. Freedom? Dream on! Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted. Too bad I never made a workable plan to attain it. I realize now that freedom has a price. It's earned. I haven't earned mine. I'm not yet ready to claim it. It's that simple.

My heart is undefeated. I will play the game for a while longer, but only until I sense my time has arrived to step forward and play a different part, the part I feel I am destined for. As long as there is time on the clock, I will play the game. I have a life to rebuild, such as it is, and thank God for the resources at my disposal even within such a system as this. There is a sanity to it, if you don't dig too deep. :D

So I'll make use of what's here now in preparation for whatever is to come after. My primary concern is to learn a practical trade. Since I left high school eight years ago, I've only managed to hit dead end after dead end. I've never really had a clear idea what I wanted to do for a living. I have a better idea now, and the will to do what it takes to find out for sure what it is, get that education, and finally gain a useful skill set so that someday I'll be able to support not only myself, but my future children as well.

Running away was a pipe dream. There's no "away" to run to. Everything I need is right here. It's a tough pill to swallow, to admit that I've been on the wrong track all this time. Not that adventuring in itself is wrong - God forbid! - but I see now that I have not been in a position where I could do that and still be leading a responsible life too. And I think some kind of adventure may find me anyway, before all is said and done. No need to seek it out!

Sometimes the very hardest thing to do is exactly what a person must do. In my case, it's to humble myself down to my own size, bite the bullet, and play the game for as long as need be.

But I won't be singing their song while I do it. ;)

On the one hand, this is a superfluous entry, because I have nothing to say. But then, would that be so very different from any other entry? Anything in this blog actually worth the bits and pixels it takes up isn't from me, but merely passes through me on its way here from somewhere else. And I'll be first to call bullshit on that and admit that it's all ego, all the time... except for what isn't. Make sense? Good either way. It is what it is.

So I'm leaving everything I know behind in just a matter of days now. Certain details are probably best left unbroadcast in order not to attract the wrong kind of attention, but if I've got it coming, then there's nothing I can do to stop that either. "Irresponsible" and "reckless" would be the judgment pronounced upon me by most people, but I'm just doing what I have to do. Playing my part, from the heart. To do anything else would be unthinkable.

I've been doing a great deal of soul-searching, shining light on some deep, dark issues of the psyche. Issues of self-doubt versus self-confidence, intellect versus intuition, demanding versus allowing, my relationship with the Divine (most acutely with its Feminine aspect), and most confusing of all, sex. I have no idea how these issues are going to be resolved, or how quickly. It will be a natural process of unfolding, more likely longer than shorter. My impatience to be done with all these things helps not at all. And that's another issue in itself.

Self-acceptance, embracing the moment as the perfection that it is from the viewpoint of the Absolute... the presence of the One... gratitude and love. These are the things of which I must constantly re-mind myself. And quite often am re-minded through no effort of my own, but by the grace of God manifest in my life and in the world around me. A glorious sunset, arrayed like a masterpiece of Classical hyperreality and utterly indifferent to my petty thoughts of melancholy self-pity... little things, even insects, so full of significance. The invisible speaking through the visible, revealing itself moment by moment, piece by piece. I need this. I cannot live without it. And to live is to strive toward it.

To my old friends, I say thank you for all that we've been able to share. You'll always be with me in my heart, and I with you. To those new friends whom I have yet to meet, I welcome you in advance and look forward to the fun and the learning we will have together.

That's all for now. There will be more.

Dear friends, my brothers and sisters in humanity,

These are momentous days. I have a feeling that a great corner is being turned collectively. Can I be forgiven for making that call as an unqualified individual who sees only very little, the closest things around him and a few clues from the outside world? I hope so. In any case, it matters not what I think, but what is.

God is stirring (in) the hearts of men. I feel the call to awaken. It is so strong as to be undeniable, and in present time it must be heard by all in whom there is yet a spark of life, of soul and of spirit.

Evil deeds can no longer be hid. They are exposed in their fullness for all to see. The mass of them is as a blood-red blight rising to the surface of the ocean, threatening all with sickness and death. This dire circumstance is made manifest (reflected) in the physical realm so that we can identify it plainly in our hearts and finally come to the realization of where we went wrong and what we must do.

I find myself wondering if there's even any place for words now. Things are in motion, such dynamic and incredible motion, that there seems hardly to be any time for words anymore. It's just happening, and happening, and happening. Miracles and synchronicities are no longer just the spice of my life; they are becoming the very meat of it.

I am meeting people I would never have imagined meeting. I am riding a tremendous wave of events, things that need doing, expectations, and emotions. Time spent in analyzing it all just seems wasted. I can't afford to do more than just process things as they occur and commit myself ever more fully to the path I am on. All else must fall by the wayside. Time truly is speeding up. Stress levels are high, but I am coping. I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like once things really get rolling, because this is just the prelude!!!

I'm on an epic threshold here, and if I'm not just imagining it, then the world may be in the same place as well.

How do you explain the fact that, on the night of Midsummer 2010, I meet, for the first time ever face to face, a person who understands everything? Everything I say makes sense to them and vice versa. How does that even happen??? It makes no sense to the rational, linear mind. It can only make sense in a quantum-leap-making, right-brain way of understanding, where like attracts like and the movements of the stars and planets correspond esoterically to the energies of probable events on Earth. Does it even need to make sense at all? It is what it is, and it is wonderful and full of beauty. Like all Creation.

I am seriously in danger of overwhelming myself here. (haha) Backing off. Going to sleep. Tomorrow's another (apocalyptically) intense, big motherf***ing day. See you around, and for Christ's sake, don't look back.

Peace. I'll be back here soon.

What can I tell you? I have no answers. Though I have, through the murk, perceived many golden images of reflected truth, heard many stories from great minds that see further than I, all I can tell you is that I am here, now. So many theories, so many explanations, and none are definitive. All fall short of the truth, for they are but fragmented images, filled in with the conceits and fancies of the imagination. We stumble in the dark, we cannot see. We strive and strain for knowledge, but ever does wisdom elude us.

Some say we are evolving from the muck towards higher levels of being. Others say we are fallen gods, trapped by our inability to recognize and reclaim our own forgotten power. We live in oh, such special times – that oh, maybe aren't so special after all. The spirits, the sages, the secret teachings of all ages: we turn to them for help, and find that there is no one to follow. For to follow any one for too long is to stray into distraction. To make progress, we seek always to see beyond the next bend, to what remains hidden. And yet no progress is possible, all paths appear dead ends. Is there any hope of spiritual gain? Must we first abandon hope?

I will tell you what I know. I know that I am here, now. And, if there is any logic to the universe, I have a point of origin from which I emanate as my seeming self in time and space. By the power of divine will, by choice, by belief, and by agreement is this world made solid around me. I know that this is not my home, but that I chose to be here, to experience this incredible, immersive game in the most potent way possible. And so I appear to be contained, restrained, repressed, weakened, limited, blinded, maimed, diseased, trapped, confused, deceived, in pain, in need, and utterly, utterly lost. And yet... I am here, now. I am inside the illusion, far from home... and yet, home is where I am already, in that eternal state from whose bland absolutity I escaped by coming here to play. I know that even that scenario is just another story in a creation full of story. But it suits me at this moment.

What else is there but all that is?

I've heard it said, for what it's worth, that the truth won't set you free. First it'll piss you off, and then you'll realize that you were free all along. Make of that what you will.

I know that if I only knew, I'd know that I was free. And sometimes I feel it, like the fleeting touch of a distant memory. Freedom. And yet it is always there, just waiting to fill my awareness if I but choose to let it in.

This is the story of all stories. Choose yours with care, or have it chosen for you. Either way, it's your adventure. And at the end of it, should you choose to make an end, you'll find yourself back home and realize that you never even left. So, might as well make the most of it. Tell yourself a story worth the telling.

I alluded last time to my commitment to a spiritual path. In my bright-eyed enthusiasm, I neglected to mention the dark side of that coin, which, appropriately enough, now shines upon my life in its turn.

This world is a proving ground. Earthly existence is defined by tension and struggle between opposing forces. On the one hand, the human spirit desires to be free and to experience oneness and unconditional love; on the other hand, it is seduced into bondage, separation, and fear by all the myriad illusions of this world. It is our moment-to-moment freewill choice that decides which influence will win out.

Last week, prior to my trip to Model Expo in Helsinki to display a few of my Lego creations to the public, I was very much of two minds as to the task ahead of me, which is to let go of that material pursuit which has so consumed my artistic impulses for most of my life (not to mention a considerable amount of money). I figured that the exhibition would clarify the matter in my mind and bring me to a place where that letting go would be easier. In essence, I wished for my passion for turning ABS molded bricks into my original creations (MOCs) to burn itself out - a burnout that I've been trying to induce for months already. On some level, that notion did come true. I do feel more able to quit the hobby and sell off my collection than before. Doesn't mean the thought of it doesn't still cause me some amount of pain, but the way has opened up before me to the point where concrete action is feasible.

There's a lot more plot and drama to this story, but I'll try to pare it down to the most relevant bits here.

I was told, in a Tarot reading, that I would be going through an energetic battle (8 of Swords). That seems to be coming true already, although it may be that the real thing is yet to come. But judging from my dreams last night, and the way I've been feeling... yes, this is very much a battle of opposing energies. And it's one that I've been losing quite badly so far. Through emotional heaviness and negative thought patterns, I've found myself succumbing to confusion, powerlessness, and victimhood.

One of my dreams last night showed a small, reptilian demon acting like a harmless, cute little puppy that just needed someone to open a sealed packet of food for it. The girl's sympathy and compassion were winning out over her better judgment... next thing I saw was the same demon, ten times larger, swallowing a man's arm while its friend went for his other arm.

Don't feed the demons.

I was also shown, prior to falling fully asleep, a vision of myself and my shadow self. My shadow self was just too strong, too cunning for me; no matter which way I turned or what I tried to do, he was there ahead of me, sabotaging, overturning, perverting, diverting everything I did so that it fed into his plans instead of my own. There was no way to win at this game. As difficult as it was, I knew I had to stop fighting him, stop resenting him, stop relying on my own strength and limited vision. I tried to quiet myself, find peace, connect with the One in whom there is no separation and no conflict, to realize that I and my shadow were of the same stuff, just different expressions. The true I was neither little-me nor shadow-me, and yet contained both. The key to ending the struggle was understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, release. I did not actually attain that at the time, but I knew it and I went for it.

I'm being tested. I've been warned about this by a lot of people who've walked the spiritual path. There's no free lunch, no pill to be perfect, and no one-size-fits-all solution. It's a process that has to play out for each person. A process of shedding all those endless layers of false self, revealing always another, slightly more realized image of the perfection at the center. Every experience, pleasant or unpleasant, is an opportunity for progress. It's all in the attitude with which you meet it. For best results, choose love. Choose faith. Hold fast and have courage.

The Divine can appear as a terrible, punishing schoolmaster, or as a gentle, supportive teacher. Both forms have the same goal and the same purpose, merely different approaches. Life as struggle; life as gift. Both equally valid ways of seeing, both necessary. One to be transcended, the other to be realized.

Namasté, my friend. All the best. See you at the destination. Back Home.

Life has been kicking ass for me lately. I even recorded my first video blog where I went on about that. Hilarious thing, though: as soon as I got it into my ego like that – Boom! – life started (gently but firmly) kicking my ass. I couldn't get a picture to show up in Windows Movie Maker (could only get audio, and a crappy audio it was), and that got me thinking that maybe vlogging hadn't been such a hot idea after all. The more I thought about the video I'd recorded, the more I thought how embarrassing it'd be. I'm not too terribly awkward on camera, but my speaking skills aren't up to a level where I can just go off-the-cuff and have it come out how I want it. Not that I'm so vain that I can't let people see me as I am, but if the point is to make a point, then I want to do it as well as I can and not waste people's time with my halting speech and half-formed thoughts.

Perhaps I will still make a video blog at some point, but it would probably be either me reading stuff aloud or be a private video as a letter home to my family. I think those options would help me be less self-conscious, too. Seeing oneself on the screen simultaneously rather tends to have that effect, unfortunately. I'd rather not feed my ego that way if I can help it.

Anyway, I've had a lot on my mind, even as I've been flying high on a creative roll on the magic carpet of universal love that makes everything go my way. The blogs/websites of a number of highly conscious individuals (links on the right if you're reading this on my Blogspot) have provided plenty of food for thought recently, but I've mostly been wrestling with a very personal issue: my hobby.

First I should tell you why it's become such an issue. You see, my plan at this point is to leave the country by the end of June, which will mark five years since I left my family in Vancouver and moved to the land of my birth to see what experiences it might hold for me. These five years have been incredibly transformative and full of different phases. My life situation has undergone radical changes by the year:

Year zero: leave job and hometown in Canada to enlist in Finnish conscript military as an adventure and a requirement for keeping my dual citizenship.

Year one: discharged with rank of 2nd lieutenant. Begin studies in Forestry at Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences.

Year two: summer of love. Relationship with girlfriend at its peak. Active social life. Internship at building supply warehouse provides financial security and chance to work largely outdoors, serving customers. Everything is great.

Year three: everything falls apart. Plans to switch field of study to Theology come to naught as I discover that the Christianity I was raised into has been a weapon of mass deception and no longer serves my spiritual needs. Quit Forestry, break up with girlfriend. Truth-seeking begins in earnest. Job at call center pays the bills but eats at the soul. Breakdown on the job prompts move to Oulu, an area with many relatives and friends. Find new job as personal assistant to severely disabled father of six, an ex-con and ex-hockey player whose wife left the same faith movement as me (conservative Laestadian Lutheran) to marry him.

Year four: fired from job in spring, after six months. Had been too wrapped up in myself and my inner life to really engage fully and integrate into the family's home. (The ex-Laestadian girl who succeeded me apparently serves the family's needs much better, for which I am very glad.) Desire to find another regular job is zilch, as interest in being really independent has taken off. Start translating business. Find that I really don't have what it takes, but deny reality until savings run out in the fall and I am forced to shut it down and apply for government social aid. The emotional support of close friends plays a key role.

Year five (now): jettisoning most material possessions with intent to go on a trip of indeterminate length, starting with Sweden and continental Europe and ending in Vancouver. Money will likely run out along the way, at which point (barring some kind of temporary employment) I will be entirely at the mercy of God and my fellow human beings. That thought scares me a lot less than it would probably scare most people.

So now the trouble here is that the only thing I've ever become really good at – the hobby (socially still rather marginal, although the public awareness and acceptance of it are constantly increasing) of building original creations out of Lego bricks, for which I still have as unrepentant a passion as ever – is up against the compelling need to drop everything and hit the road. Shipping my entire Lego parts collection to Vancouver would be very costly due to the weight, so I must now significantly reduce its size. Selling it all off wholesale would be the rational thing to do, but as I mentioned, my passion for building is as yet unabated (despite occasional bouts of disillusionment with it all and an ever-present awareness that none of it matters in the end). Lately, I've been in a veritable frenzy of building in preparation for my first exhibition down in Helsinki next month. I also have a prospective buyer who has offered to pay 13 euros per kilo for sorted, bulk Lego parts. So I am left to separate the wheat, so to speak, from the chaff. Which parts are superfluous and which ones am I going to need for my projects in progress? It's a tough call to make, but I have to make it. Which explains my anxiety.

Well, that's a load off my chest already, to have laid out the situation in words like this. I think it's now clear to me that I would be wisest to enlist the help of a friend or friends in this process. The idea of doing it alone is just too daunting. And I guess that simple epiphany is what I was getting at with this whole entry, though I only realize it now. I do hope that anyone who took the time to read this will send supportive thoughts my way, be they voiced or silent. Advice and compassion are always appreciated, and I won't bite your head off even if you're in total disagreement with what I'm doing. Hey, maybe I am crazy... but that's still a subjective judgment. I'm just doing what seems to be the right thing for me personally. So... wish me luck?

- Not that I believe in luck. (grin)