Jaimee Eat World

More than what?

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I Could Be So Much More Than This

Throughout my time working on this project I’ve obviously thought a fair bit about old dreams, lost dreams and new dreams and on at least more than one occasion, perhaps even as I sit here writing this next blog, I’ve wondered what the hell I’m doing with my life.

I sometimes still worry about being wasteful of my time. There’s always a nagging feeling that I could be, no, should be, doing so much more than I am.

It gets frustrating when you feel like you’re constantly missing the markers that’ll somehow make you feel…. Accomplished?

No: Worthy?

No…

Whole.

But tomorrow I’ll get up and try to find them again.

I Wanna Be So Much More Than This

I suppose with craving more it’s important to identify some sort of quantifiable element of which you’re lacking, but why does that always seem like such an impossible challenge?

Am I destined to just be someone who piddles around the basement recording Jimmy Eat World covers? What an increasingly odd place to be at this junction of my life.

That’s not to devalue what this has meant to me or what it’s brought me with every week that I return to it – in fact, I love it. A little bit of fun discipline, an opportunity to be creative and work on my music abilities without it feeling like practice (cause that’s a chore), a seemingly simple goal with a defined end to chip away at and mimic progress.

When everything else in my life is not quite going to plan, I am at least still able to come back to this and say I’ve sort of done something. Another track done, another album nearly finished.

But I know that eventually when I finish I will still not feel “more than”. This alone could never bring me that.

No One Cares

Some people only find fulfillment in things that generate a positive response from an audience or admiration from their family and peers and while I don’t think that’s quite me, I won’t deny it does help to get some support.

But support or no support, you kind of have to just keep going. People don’t usually actually support anything until its reached some level of proven success or value to the way they view the world and that’s an impossible metric to base your own life on. We’re all just, pretty different – we don’t want the same things.

Rather than getting lost in this idea of becoming “more” I think you have to eventually succumb to the idea of less. It helps you filter out all the “more” that doesn’t really instill happiness.

Learn to love the process of doing even if you never finish what you started. Become comfortable with absolutely no one caring about you, your interests, your goals, your life (they have their own to worry about). Release control of the reigns that you believe are determining the direction of your life; Breathe. Take one step. Now try another.

To say I had different expectations or ideas about how things would go in my life remains an understatement, but at least these days I no longer feel the anxiety of “being less than,” or “not doing enough”.

I’m just sort of… working my way through. Taking what comes and responding as best I can to it. Finding value in the moments where nobody knows what I’m doing or why, let alone have an opinion on it, and why should I care about that opinion anyway? I shouldn’t, so I don’t.

So far it’s lead me to some interesting places. A couple wrong turns along the way, but nothing we can’t come back from.

And to be sure, nobody ever really asks me about it. Any of it.