I’m exhausted, friends. Maybe someday soon I’ll feel less bone-weary and have energy to pick a side or something, but for now I’m just tired.

I’m tired of politics and religion and society and business situations that require me to fit into a hierarchy of ideas that aren’t even mine and defend things that no one has bothered to think about much.

I’m tired of mindless battles of ideas that don’t merit more than a passing glance but consume endless quantities of the precious stuff life is made of–my time, energy, and attention. I’m tired even of defending my weariness of it all. This is my life and I don’t have to play the game any certain way, or care about anything that doesn’t matter to me.

This is my personal statement of what has become a total commitment to take my own life back, one day at a time … one decision at a time … one ruthless turning toward myself and away from anything that is not alive or true for me at a time. Because this is all I have.

My time, my attention, my energy, and my actions. With these materials, I either build a life as I choose or I allow them to be taken from me and turned into a life that matches a design that is not my own. With these colors, I either paint my own picture or I allow them to be used to paint the image of a world that I may not desire.

So, being tired is a good thing, I suppose, if it means the turning point; if it means that I begin more and more to choose what is true to myself every day. Being tired is good if it means that I become more radically honest about my own selfishness … about my own desire to shape a life of my own.

I am happy for those who are not tired and love to keep playing the game. I really am. There are many days I would maybe even envy having all that extra energy to spend in pursuits of that sort. It seems simpler than a sometimes lonely walking away from things that a world-gone-crazy has decided are important.

But the older I get, the less energy I have to spend on anything that is not true for me. Somehow that seems to be a good thing, too. Because I find that when I spend the energy I have with care and intention, it’s more than enough to create a life that is deeply satisfying to me.

And that is all I ever really wanted anyway. So, I say “fuck it” to everything else.

Your fellow traveler,

Jacob Nordby