The Next Thing:"This could be heavy": Metaphysical Nonsense

Doing the next thing is probably the last thing on my mind when faced with a crisis. When I hit a brick wall, such as an overdrawn bank account, fight or flight (jump on a plane or kill your ex) syndrome, unemployment or usually all of the above, all I can think of is ultimatums; I will have $100,000 by tomorrow or I will shoot myself in the head. No, actually I would slit my wrists because that would obviously be much more dramatic. But no really, when I hit a low, apparently I would much rather throw myself into a life of prostitution and drug running than simply taking the next serving job, and well, just doing the next thing. Perhaps Michael Bay and I have much more in common than I thought... sex, explosions and intervention from outer space.

Inevitably though, after screaming threats at the universe in my car, lying in the middle of the room staring at the ceiling searching my self destructive mind for a hair brain solution to my current "problem" and then spending the next few hours googling "what to do next?", I somehow realize I just have to do the next thing. I would still rather run into the woods and build a fire, and if I could find a woods, I just might do that very thing, but the soft beauty of "the next thing" like a soft blush in the morning sky slowly creeps up on my psyche. So I make a to-do list, things that must be done. Interestingly, they are all creative; not an item on the list is destructive, and I realize I am not a captive, but "indeed there will be time." "There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; time for all the works and days of hands...time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions... And indeed there will be time To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and 'Do I dare?' time to turn back and descend the stair."

Yes, there will be time to find the art in the pain. The phoenix rises not out of the sky, but out of the burning embers of "the next thing." So, although there may be red paint thrown across the room when I wake, I pick up my pen and write.

All quotes from T.S Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" except of course the title quote, which is Back To the Future, duh.