Taking the Initiative...

Folk #1: It's sounds heady, maybe self-absorbed, & a bit improbable, but I find that most of my life has been about "forging my own path." Left to my own devices. I am suspicious of my own idea of "making things happen," but it is true, waiting around for someone else to take me by the hand, lead me to the riverside, just never worked out. Looking back, all the key steps forward came pretty much from own intiative. This initiative most often came out of an existential crisis, an act of bleak desperation, stultifying boredom, & even, sometimes, great inspiration, excitement & enthusiasm. All of this has been bounded by pretty hard limits. A small foot-print, a circumscribed reach. Maybe most of these limits have been self-imposed? I just don't know. Limit of imagination, limit of intelligence, limit of "talent," limit of organization, limit of finances, limit of understanding the ways of the world.  I have had no great plan. Improvising moment to moment. "If I don't do it, it won't get done." I think this is true of the great & small events in my life. Still, I wonder if really, it's all been a misunderstanding on my own part? Is having "agency" an illusion? And how have I limited myself? How many doors were open, and I just didn't walk through? What were the decisive decisions that sent me down this long, winding, crooked path? Not knowing what I am doing, and still doing it anyway has been rewarding: writing, acting, directing, playing guitar, song-writing, performing with two bands, living creatively and with total commitment, but it has  also been damning: bad decisions, wrong turns, dead-ends, crushing failures. And, still, just fucking carrying on. You know, fuck it, & damn the torpedoes. Maybe not the best code for living a full life. But, it has been my method by choice, or maybe by default?