Reflection on life

It does not pay for me to look back on my life...although I do it quite a bit.  I could blame the mood swings of my disorder, but a lot of my life seems to have been a waste.  Lots of aborted efforts.  I've enumerated them before:  programming, painting, photography, writing, relationships,...  When I worked for the government, I once worked for four years on a database effort that was thrown away, ironically, while I was in the hospital giving birth to my son.  Why?  The data were later salvaged and used in another project by a different branch.  It still makes me angry to think about it.

I have already expounded on the waste of my artistic efforts:  the painting, photography, and writing that has ended up at the dump.  Why do I do this?  I have become a self-absorbed whiner.  Does looking at where you have been help you determine where you are going?  Is it going to be more of the same?  There is no way to guarantee that it will not.  None of those efforts were started with the intention of non-accomplishment.

Then, of course, I could flip it around...why do I feel that I need to accomplish anything?  Am I measured by my contributions to the world?  Is that how we are to measure the merit of a person?  What does that say about the millions of beautiful people who spend their entire existence merely staying alive.  

I hope that when I leave this earthly realm, I get a chance to talk with someone who knows what it was for.

In the meantime, I will join the throngs of human beings merely striving to stay alive.  If you have read my previous posts you will know that on many days I write to stay alive.