What's going on?

I think I need to address my desires, goals, and efforts, even if for no other reason than to place it somewhere to reference my own progress.  I know I'm a very late bloomer.  My mind and ambition seem to work at the speed of tectonic or glacial movement.  Slow, inevitable, but unrelated to the immediate scale of time around it.  The time I've been spending toward this end has given some valuable illumination.  There is hope.  It's been a while since I've really considered some hope as possible.

What would be my dream job or ultimate goal?  I would love to make a living off of my creative endeavors.  This has always fallen around some facet of writing.  The writing I do all the time and have considerable drive to perform has been poetry and exposition, along with opinions.  I have discovered it is for some reason difficult to write fiction.  I think focus and fear of becoming obsessed make me avoid pouring too strongly into that.  I still would like to, but the reality seems to be that other steps may need to happen first to enable more.

I've been searching and evaluating freelance opportunities for writing: articles, blogs, whatever.  I am finally getting onboard to do "real" searching.  I think journalism is the way to go, for me.  The style and content are slanted toward my usual writing type.  I am pushing to put writing in those certain gaps where other distractions have taken control.  It is honestly slow-going but I have begun to see gradual benefit and progress there.  Things have just gotten drastically boring.  I find very few books or movies or anything can hold my attention or interest.  I want to make stuff now.  The first part of it is to improve the skills and find out what to do with it.

I have given myself a project: A Poem Per Day.  I am going to write a singular poem each day, entirely original, and perhaps never to find itself anywhere outside this project.  This serves many purposes: practice, keeping original, setting a pace and schedule, etc.

I also want to find some time each day to look up opportunities, and maybe catch a paying job which will hopefully line up with all this emerging direction.  I've also been going over old writings and starting to form another poetry publication, perhaps start taking my work at into the masses.  I'm just chipping away at the three columns of: Dream, Plan, and Reality.

I thank any and all for their help and encouragement.

Predictably Unpredictable Predictions

Prediction is one of humanity's strengths and worst dangers.  It can bring us to great heights, as well as great falls.  It can mean hope or despair.  It can have promise or foreboding.  It can give motivation or paralyze us.

As for myself, it is definitely a thing I grapple with and ever find frustration both at myself and the situation.  Particularly, when it comes to loved ones, I compulsively thrust flashes of what might be the worst result of an activity's consequences.  Getting close to stairs, using potentially harmful objects, etc.  It's a fear of the inherent clumsiness and ignorance I am so certain they will fall victim (pun?) to.  I know it's irrational, but inescapable in my mind.

To another degree are the conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics.  They are certain of what cannot be so, despite all to the contrary.  "The end is nigh!" type of people.  You can pick your flavor: invasion, epidemic, Apocalypse, technology gone awry, etc.

All that said, maybe the thoughts I've been having won't seem all that extreme.  There are three "First Contact" scenarios I find worth considering.  There are three prominent possibilities which have gradually come to grow in likelihood by my observations in this life, so far.

 What does "First Contact" mean?  What unites these scenarios is humans come into contact with other-than-from-earth entities.  However, could there already be creatures upon our own planet that we have yet to make contact with, or have yet to discover the ones we think we know already reveal their sentience.  It may be reasonable to qualify our sign language communications with various apes as a form of contact with another intelligent species.  These are aliens that were never aliens.

Criteria need to be better defined.

Besides aliens, first contact may be with artificial intelligence.  We may one day invent our own contemporary through technology.  We might build our aliens.  Where would THAT sentience come from?  Is it even farther removed than newcomers from outer space?  How "far" is sentience "away" from emerging than aliens traveling light years across vast swaths of distance?  Right beneath the surface?  Or deep within our inner space?  Will we make contact with entities psychically?  Our own minds still perplex and mystify us.  Maybe we're the aliens where our own ignorance has been the barrier between them and us.

The one I feel we may be close to and might even present a higher state of profundity is making contact with the dead.  If incontrovertible proof were demonstrated that spirits are really there and actually all around us, it might change the world even more drastically than aliens, creatures, or artificial intelligence.  Ramifications are certainly large and sweeping, probably close to unfathomable until such a thing might happen.  I believe this scenario bears the most merit, really.  What "aliens" would be most interested in trying to establish contact with us?  The other first contact scenarios require the active pursuit by us.  The culture shock and difficulties are most difficult when considering just how alien the aliens would be.  Their development and circumstances are almost impossible to offer assurance of success in establishing communication, let alone co-operation.  At least with the spirits, chances are that they have a much more understandable nature, with at least as much experience of being human as ourselves.  Plenty of hurdles will already have been hurdled there.  We would not need to travel as far as suggested in other scenarios.  We can search right here, with all the time and energy put into investigation, rather than the expenses in all the things needed to explore others.  This goes for animals, too, I suppose, which is probably as likely as spirit contact.

There has been a generally higher interest in paranormal or supernatural activity of late.  It feels that the world has been looking into that direction than others, as of late.  I have a feeling it's all a race between smart animals and human spirits, which are the leading horses.  Horses?  Ghost jockey on ghost horse and Mr. Ed with Wilbur as the jockey.  The long draw in getting to that archaic reference was totally worth it.