I don't tend to write much at home unless I'm struggling with something, whether it's with some unrequited desire or the urge to fill an empty space. I'm not really battling any of that these days, which I suppose is a good thing. The downside is I don't produce as much material.
The good news is I haven't lost inspiration. It just seems to come from a different place than it used to. My thought processes have changed so much over the past 5 years. It's a combination of traveling and living in foreign environments, along with simply getting older. I just don't think about the stuff I used to spend hours obsessing over--literally obsessing. So much time doing that has left me feeling exhausted, so I don't seek inspiration from obsession anymore. It just seems like a huge waste of time and energy to me now, although I miss writing songs. I haven't been able to pull one of those out lately from this different place.
I'm sure it would be logical for me to start talking about what it has been like living in Moscow for the past 4 months, but I feel the same reaction as if someone just asked me that, I don't really have a response. 'It's been cool' is insufficient, 'educational, rewarding' is cliche, 'confusing at times, but overall good' simply sounds boring. It's been all of those things, and more, or less on a given day if I've done nothing but lie in bed in my pyjamas for a whole weekend, which I'm guilty of at times. I'm at the point in my life where my location on the map can be best defined by the location I am in my own journey--means it doesn't matter where I am as long as I'm fulfilling my personal needs. Like thought processes, my needs are changing too. I don't crave the excitement and suspense as much. The need to relax and enjoy good company is far more important, just like establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with others and working hard at my job. Fundamental needs seem to take more precedent than seeking thrills from an ever-changing scenery. In a nutshell, yes, I'm getting older. I'm in a new phase.
I don't drink as much, I'm less impulsive, and yet I've still managed to obtain a bit of that idealism I thought I had lost after college. I've realized that giving up on humanity is the worst thing you can do, that even the tiniest ripple in the wave still creates an effect no matter how small, in an ocean full of negativity. There is so much of it in the world these days, and the seduction of it is something I cannot explain. The faults we find in others can most likely be found in ourselves if we dig deep enough. I seek inspiration in people now, instead of from the spinning circles of unhealthy obsession. People like Malala and Martin Luther King Jr., people who believe in peace and stand to resist the temptation of negativity. It's out there, it's on our fingertips and it's in our hearts, if we just learn how to embrace differences and establish connections. And just work really fucking hard. Peace isn't easy just like a lot of things we manage to do with a bit of effort. But the moment we just give up on it, the world goes black. That's not the kind of world I want to live in.
So, in closing, I just want to say that I'm going to do my best to write more and communicate ideas that swim in my head. I'm fumbling with a few ideas of things I could do to help bridge relations between Western and Russian people. Aside from the language, we're not all that much different from each other.
I miss my friends and family very much. I love you all.
-t