Watching Clouds Drifting By

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the way with the goddamn way with what matters.” – Ernest Hemmingway.

The 1918 Broadway Oh, Look! featured a song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows."

The music is credited to Harry Carroll, but the melody is adapted from Fantaisie-Impromptu by Frédéric Chopin. The lyrics were written by Joseph McCarthy, and the song was published in 1917.

The first version I heard was by Tony Bennett, but it’s been recorded by Judy Garland, Petula Clark, Frank Sinatra and so many others.

Bennett starts things off by asking the musical question, “why have I always been a failure?”

“I’m always chasing rainbows,” the song goes, “watching clouds drifting by. My schemes are like my dreams, always ending up in the sky.”

The song ends with the singer talking about “waiting to find a little bluebird in vain.”

I’ve been spending far too time lately rewriting history lately—even more so than usual—and this tune is starting to feel like the theme song for my life.

In my never-ending obsession with the Road Not Taken, I’ve been looking over my shoulder to days gone by and changing things so much that I’ve created a completely different person.

Except he’s not real.

If only I had done this, if only I hadn’t done that, my life would’ve been so much better than it is today.

I know full well that nothing will come of all this agonizing except more heartache and yet I keep shaking up that emotional Etch-A-Sketch and starting from scratch to endlessly obsess over what might have been.

You feel briefly powerful when manipulate time, events and people until they all behave like trained seals hopping up and down on your command. Until reality comes crashing in.

It’s like I’m banging my head against the wall, only it’s easier on my skull and all the damage is on the inside.

Instagram memes have been serving as a bootleg therapy for me, but many of them are aimed at a younger crowd. Quotes about learning a lesson before it's too late don't excatly resonate very well with me. I know that getting older plays a major role in this stagnant state of mind. The years are relentlessly racing by while the dreams are still gathering dust on the shelf.

It’s also a lifelong habit. I’ve been at the negative thinking routine for several decades, so turning this misery around is quite challenging.

And when I think about all the people is this world who are really suffering, people with real problems, I feel even worse.

Sorry to waste your time with this thing, but I'm having trouble get back on track. And knowing that so many of my problems are my own doing only makes things work. This evening, I finally got around to opening an email I had sent to myself early last week. It contained a quote from Randy Pausch’s book The Last Lecture.

Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who died from pancreatic cancer in 2006 at 46 years old.

“If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out,” he said.

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy,” he added. “Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.”

No, it won't. Now all I’ve got to do is work really work on my goals rather than waiting for a little bluebird in vain.