Thoughts in a Whirl

Been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I am in life. What I've been doing with it. What I want to do with it. Where I am in general and am I happy? It's frustrating not being able to adequately answer such questions efficiently. I've been tossing around the same two questions for a little over a week now and still have come up with little. Those questions? What makes you happy? What are you passionate about?

Easy enough questions to answer correct? You'd think so but that just doesn't seem to be the case with me. Truth is I've spent so much of my life trying to make things better for everyone else and neglecting myself in the process. I always have to make sure everyone is happy, everyone has a good time, everyone is doing well...everyone that is, except for me. Me, yeah the one person you shouldn't neglect is the one I have neglected the most. Always looking out for everyone else and putting myself, my thoughts, my feelings, my life on the back burner to please everyone else. I'd like to believe, have actually believed, that I've gotten beyond that "everyone is more important than you" deal, but sadly it's still there hovering in the back of my mind. I always sacrifice myself for my work, for others and never, well not never more like seldom, focus on me. Why? I don't know that's just the way that I am...

What makes someone do that? Focus so much on everyone else that they fade to the back burner and blend into the background never to be seen, never to be noticed always trying to make others shine brighter. Why do I do that? Why? I don't know, but I've done it far too much. Something at some point has got to give, something, somewhere, at some point will give.

So back to the initial questions posed at the start of this new idea of a journal: What are you passionate about? What makes you happy?

Should really be posing the question: why can't I answer that as easily as I should be able to, shouldn't I?

So in answer to those two questions? I've written down a few things, a very miniscule amount of things...that makes me sad. Why sad? Because there are so few things listed. What am I passionate about? It would seem in the last week and a half I've only come up with a few scant things. In a nut shell thus far?

Birds and birdwatching

Abandoned places

Architecture

Ghost stories

Chicago

Yeah that just about sums it all up. Sad I know. In answer to the "what makes you happy?" question...

The jury's still out on that one.

Pathetic isn't it? Absolutely pathetic.