Serving Two Masters (introspection to distress)

Yes, I am skewered with chaos and confusion. My life is out of whack. I am not a happy camper and reside as much in depression and avoidance as in joy and achievement. This pinch between the rock and hard place is not a place to hang out.

It's my fault. I just can't seem to make choices. On the one hand, I want to be healthy, have a community that shares an interest, or, as some say, the same disease. This is the land of serious cycling. On the other, I have agreed to a life of the mind, of letters, of reading and writing.

The problem is that, given my status as a full-time worker bee, each of these requires all of my free time if I am to do them well. (I don't want to do things half-slow or half-fast.)

I love both of them equally in different ways. Each feeds my soul. Each carries its rewards and drawbacks. One provides me with a livelihood, the other a heart throb. One a deeply satisfying creative outlet, the other wind, rain, sun, and rushes of dopamine. In both I feel at home at times, outside myself, suspended in time, realized. Yet they compete with each other for time and attention.

I feel like Solomon holding a child in the air, knife poised.

If I were really good at one of these, that might help with the choice, but I am fair to middlin writer and a so-so cyclist. This is personal. (Well, maybe it is between me and God, but I can't go there.)  

If I could just sit here and not make any choices, I would do that forever. But the tension is wearing me out, sapping my days of energy, banging a tin cup on the bars of its urgency. Time is always tight and I am aware that it is running out. My body an brain both are retreating faster than glaciers in this age of climate change.

If I want to do something with either of these, I need to act, and soon. commitment and focus and follow through all require sacrifice and energy.

So what do I do?

I guess for now I'll just go teach and then follow my feet as they take the rest of me into the next moment. And the choice may be made for me by fate or circumstance.

More practically, I need to juggle and move back and forth. Expect nothing. Show up and do what you can and want and let the results follow.

Beneath both of these lies the demon born in my childhood -- fear of loss. I don't want to do what I love for fear of failing and losing. There it is. My passion is starving because I strangle it with my fear. That is the monster under the bed and perhaps the real master.