The words that bring stinging exhilaration still ring in my ears: “I’m disappointed”.

I think I’ve lost the ability to sort out what’s motivating me from moment to moment. I choose to see this, at least in part, as progress; a necessary deconstruction of my own motivations. It’s bound to be confusing and messy during demolition.

But it feels like it’s taking too long. The last 2 years or so have been largely defined by this liminal space:

Bored but busy.

Less motivated by the approval of others but otherwise unmotivated.

This has resulted in a lack of discipline. I’m overeating regularly and eating the wrong things. While I maintain a certain level of physical activity, it’s only because I have no car and I’m FORCED to walk or ride my bike (this supports the practice of radical action…”burn the ships!”, and all that). I’m not going to the gym, rarely working hard outside.

The offices do not draw me in. I usually have to force myself into them.

This blog and other contemplative activities are obviously hit and miss (mostly miss).

I write this from an Air B&B while on a 2 day personal retreat (the first I’ve had since June(?)

Part of me wants to take music more seriously, but again…I’m not feeling motivated.

The only things that seem to draw me are: Sleep (I really look forward to that!) food, poking around Ancestry.com, Imgur, getting the Applications curriculum done and Chaplaincy work…

O.k. wait. Suddenly I sound more “motivated” than I felt at the beginning of this post?!

So, I guess what’s happening is: my motivations are CHANGING.

Damn. That’s hitting close to a bull’s eye. I’m much less motivated by sexual desire (I have no reason to attribute this to anything but age…Brenda is more beautiful than ever and we are in a pretty good place).  While I want to see AC3 thrive, I just don’t care to see it become “bigger”…well, I don’t want to maintain my current role for a “big church”.

Part of what makes this confusing is that the core, difficult to articulate parts of being motivated by other’s approval are still there. I cannot deny, for example, that some of what makes the chaplain work motivating is that there’s a whole new crop of people I can seek to please.

Alright – enough. This is the theory I’m going forward with: God (and time) is doing work in me, the result of which (in part) is a change in what motivates me. During this period of transition, classic forms of distraction (sleep, food, etc.) as well as old mal-adaptive motives will inevitably be drawn into the vacuum until that space is taken up fully by the new motives.

It’s been about 10 years afterall…change is a-com’n.