Author: Matthew Groff

There are things in my life that I can check off as having accomplished a dream, which is a great feeling. And, as true for everyone, there are things I am still working at. Then there is the category of the things I thought I wanted, but now don’t. That is the one that has been funny to deal with.

I think this is the thing, the addendum that needs to be added for the, “Going After Your Dreams” speech… mainly that your dreams may change, and that’s okay.

My senior year in college, I was all hell bent on being a professional theatre director. I directed in school, and some limited success in community theatres. I moved to New York, and directed readings, and one acts, and read up on directing theory, joined a directing lab… and one day, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had felt the passion leaving me over the final two years before I admitted it, and I had acted like I was still all about it with friends. That’s why I had to admit it to myself, I was living a sham. I would still like to direct one day, but I no longer have a burning passion for it.

Then it took me awhile to come to terms with the fact that I had changed. There is a fine line from giving up, and just not wanting it anymore, and I wrestled with that. Maybe I was never that good, and I received too much rejection? Maybe. Maybe things change and life evolves?

I belong to a message board that claims to be for the residents of the neighborhood that I live in. There was a heated back and forth about a shooting that happened in NYC, where the police shot a mental disturbed black man who had a silver shower head in his hand. The police claim that they thought it was a gun, and the person had made threating gestures towards people and the police. The next level that complicates this is that the person who was shot, was known in the neighborhood as a harmless individual, though he did have mental issues. Residents of that neighborhood claim that if the police had listened to the residents, then the shooting could have been avoided.

On my neighborhood message board, a person asked whether the people who called the police where white, as the neighborhood where the shooting happened is a gentrify one. (The neighborhood I live in, and which the message board is for, is also a neighborhood that has recently started to gentrify.) It got heated very quickly as everyone started accusing everyone if being racist, and reverse racist…

There was one comment that I found insightful. The person was pointing out how angry all involved were getting, and they pointed out that at least the difficult conversation of race, economics and over policing was happening. We have to engage, and try to listen if we are going to make any progress together.

With having a kid, I am amazed at home much sleep I don’t need to keep functioning.

Functioning well, that is another story.

We have started the overnight potty training, and it is slow going. We have been getting up three to four times a night, to either deal with a wet bed, or taking the kid to the potty. It’s like when she was a new born, and we never got into a deep sleep. We only hovered around sleep, straddling conscious and unconscious.

The wife and I handle lack of sleep differently. She just slows down, but still stays sharp. I keep running at full steam, but become stupid. Might be why we work well as a couple.

Also, lack of sleep has started my mind wandering all over the place. Thinking of old events that are meaningless now, but like a flashback, I get the rush regret/remorse/or guilt from these memories. What I truly find frustrating is that if I have a flashback, then why can’t I ever have a pleasant memory? I keep going backs to the most awful experiences of my life. Not my first real kiss, but my first real breakup. I don’t get the rush of the first time I danced with a girl at my 8^th grade school dance… I get the awkwardness of being rejected at 9^th grade dance by the girl I had a crush on.

As I get older, I find life interesting in the way one event will randomly bring up another event.

As some of you may know, there was that horrible gas attack in Syria this weekend. The news of it is awful, and just heart crushing to see pain inflected on people. And as we watched the news this past Sunday, and my daughter wandered into the living room, she saw the images of children screaming and being treated for the attack. In her three-year-old way, she wanted to know why the babies were crying?

This isn’t the first time she has seen something on the news and wanted to know what it was. This won’t be the last.

I know the story of Mr. Roger’s saying the is disasters, tell children to look for the people who are helping, and trying to make it better.

But I know I live in a world where nothing is fair. That there are children born in war zones, and through no fault of their own, are being targeted by governments.

My child is lucky to born in America.

There will be a time when she will learn of the harshness of other people.

How do I keep her positive, and optimistic?

How do I help her become pragmatic and idealistic at the same time?

I think this conversation turns on itself, as I have to look in the mirror and ask, am I optimistic? Am I positive about myself and the world around me? Do I live up to the Ideal?

I have been saying to myself for some time that I have not fully recovered from my amazingly stupid stressful year and a half of working in 2016/17. I had been putting it in my journals, and even in a few small writing pieces I had done, I saw the influence of it. This morning I said it to my wife. Not that I was hiding it from her. I had spoken in length to her of how stressful it was when it was happening, and I had told her that I’m not 100% happy in my job currently. But this morning, as the words were rolling out of my mouth, I knew that I had never shared this part with her. That I have been running from problem to problem at work, and never processed that awful 2016/17-time frame.

It’s an undealt with problem, sitting in me, that I need to come to terms with.

The events have shaken my confidence in myself, and has created a new circle of self-doubt and neuroticism, which I didn’t think was possible to eclipse the self-doubt and neuroticism that I already had. The difference now was that I was willing to try things and make a fool of myself. Right now, I feel all of these blocks in me. I can also admit that I created them, and if I don’t deal with them, then I will only stifle my creativity.

Talking to my wife is a big step. Trying new things, especially creatively is the other. I feel that I am now becoming ready to deal with what has happened.