Crucible

Leaving for a few days to a beach house was pleasant enough, but the lack of mental clutter only focused my mind on my frustrations. A trip to the mountains last weekend did nothing to relieve it. Moving forward, even so much as fixing the problems that have stymied progress in the various areas where I require improvement, let alone generating that improvement, has been unacceptably slow.

What I have now is a heart full of simmering contempt, and I am ill-put even to conceal it for the sake of social/political convenience. Disgust rumbles in me. I am dissatisfied and have nearly exhausted what seemed to be my unlimited patience.

And yet... it feels like calm. A clean heat has burned away something that shouldn't have been there, or so it seems, junk that diverted me from what I should be. What remains is good steel, white from smelting, ready to be carefully formed into an Ulfbehrt. I have clear direction at last.

It's not that enjoyment has left: it remains genuine. My visible side, and much of the rest, is as jovial as ever. What I am, what I love to do, they're all still here. It's just that my basis for decisions has purified. What matters to me now is what matters to me, and while it surely helps, entertains, or benefits others, directly and indirectly, the improvement to myself is by far the majority of the motivation.

Let me be more specific, here. I have been neglected, ignored, and ill-used by some who know better, who have made agreements and even contracts now broken daily. I could demand better. I would be foolish to do so at this point. What needs to happen is patience. Work the metal into shape with determination and resolute quietude. See if things improve by way of reaction - improving myself might be the impetus to treat me as I should always have been treated. There's a strange little phenomenon, though, in which people justify their willful neglect as something that motivated the neglected. Then they want the rewards of that other person fighting their way through to where encouragement would have helped them reach far sooner. I mention it to point out that I am not taken in by it.

So I build. And if improvements I desire from others come through along the way, I'll probably consider it good, with a mental note to never trust. If not... well. Once a certain threshold is had, there will be decisions. Even God doesn't do forgiveness without apology. And I'm even less on "deathbed conversions." I could be swayed, if it was for something I still thought wasn't better replaced. But between now and then is when a chance is had to change without ultimatum.