He is just going to wake up

I've spoken elsewhere about Nachiketas (his story, my name, a poem) – whose name means 'he is just going to wake up.'

I always tend to concentrate on his name/story/meaning as that of the boy who makes friends with Death; it occurs to me tonight, as I reflect on how unawake I have been for most of my life, that the actual translation of his name may be even more important for me....

I've lived like a sleepwalker, especially since I was seventeen, since I was first disappointed/stymied, driven from what I thought was my path: and unfortunately, ever since, I've tend to use my abilities in only the laziest, most defeated, most pointless fashion – seeing more active, more productive people, I always have twinges of guilt and envy that I don't even try to keep up with them. Even at this point in my life, when I've decided that the only thing I do that really matters is writing, I don't even do that.

The reasons are obvious – as Dorothea Brande says, the 'creative' writer part of us is a child, who can't be driven to work in an adult way, and my writing is very (too much, in fact) rooted in that part of me – but those aren't very good reasons. I've been tired of being a sleepwalker for a long time, and I still want to, somehow, wake myself up... unfortunately, being so lazy, I want to have woken up, to have been habitually awake, active, productive, for the past thirty-odd years. It's too hard to just start now, to have a real life from this point....

The attraction of starting over, in a place where no one knows you. And where no one even expects anything of you: where you have no reputation....