Flotsam and Jetsam in the Land of Dreams

   I don't want to say anything cliché like, we stand at the brink of the new year, or anything. Mother's Day Funnies Pages. This isn't what this is about at all. The bulk of my observations today continue to do with whatever the heck it was I was talking about in yesterday's post- and, like I was talking about in yesterday's post with serializing my observations,* this is one of those times where I actually am splitting up a single post into multiple parts. This post was actually polyped off from the beginning of yesterday's post, the first part initially dealing more in-depth with- what I'm talking about here. It works fine the way it is now, but if you'll read this post and then yesterday's, you'd be able to see how they sort of fit together. Anyway.

   I'm 23 years old, fresh off from my best two years, full time volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - after such an experience, or wealth of experiences**, there are changes everlasting wrought in a man. Highfalutin language, so it's by its nature a cliché somewhat, that idea- can't even use your own words for it, you have to cop someone else's and it doesn't sound like you- but it's a cliché I'm willing to believe. I'm not the manchild I once was.†

   Manchildishness is emotional immaturity- completely distinct from manchildlikeness. Not the manchild one once was then would be a shift from one to the other- or a tempering of the degree of manchild, um, ocity (couldn't have said -ishness or -likeness, could I have?). In my case, though, between -ish and -like, it's apparently from one to the other.‡

   I'm still young. And, maybe still mildly (and proudly) jejune. The steel of the naivety of youth is beginning to be tempered by the heating and cooling process of, like, realism, and stuff, though...

   I (naively??) once thought that there were dreams I'd always (be able to) hold on to-- those dreams are great, and it would be nice if we were able to do two or three things at once, because some of those things are still really really neat- but other things are neater still. And logic dictates that other things must still be neater than that, and so proceed ad infinitum, and thus the major problem is when what goes where- and when rehearsal time is over, and when it's time to get on the stage. (I think I may have more to say on this in the Hundred Things, once again... I think...)

   Not that these dreams aren't still salvageable- all dreams are. The ability to follow dreams and turn them into realities is a function directly related to the investment we put into it. But how much investment would you put into a bad idea when you know it's bad and that you have had better? Maturity isn't not to follow your dreams; it's to know that they can't all be followed, and to have to make the difficult and emotionally wrenching decision of which dreams are worth following. Flotsam versus jetsam- I've heard other definitions of the distinction between the two, but the one I think makes most sense is, flotsam "floats" after a wreckage, and was lost due to natural causes, but jetsam was "jettisoned" for one reason or another. Both are necessary, in the land of dreams.

   All the projects I brought up as having, whether here in this blog or elsewhere- I once believed firmly, perhaps, that they would all be able to make it off the ground. And you can see that if you go back. It's kind of sad and naive but, that's why I do speak on these things, why I am speaking, so you can see this evolution-- nothing dies on the internet, make of that what you will, and I guess that's kind of the point.

* I should start doing posts about my own actual life, shouldn't I; if not to make things more interesting to make things more relatable to a wider audience. Great idea; I'll start doing that once I actually get a life.

** Which you can read more about in the Hundred Things... which I'm, still working out... (but which is forthcoming!)

† And, see there, right there would have been another cliché had there not been the turning on its ear of the phrase like that. This whole subject is a minefield of clichés- but maybe I'm just hypersensitive to it now, as I see "minefield" as a cliché when I just said it, and maybe it's not. The formulation of a new breed of metaphor for looking at trite subjects even in earnest is a subject for another day....

‡ I no longer have nuclear meltdowns, for instance. And, yay, double daggers!