Tempe, AZ: I am, I am Superman

Miles since last blog: 23.6
Miles Total: 3358.1

Route

Superman Complex:

When you give yourself an unhealthy feeling of responsibility. Feeling you need to save everyone around you and that no one can do their job better than you can do it yourself.

Yes, this is me. Yes, I know it. I've heard this come out of peoples' mouths for well over a decade now. I've made a few steps in the right direction, for instance, I stopped dating girls I thought I could 'save,' girls with problems that needed help. I'm done with that, I want a strong self-reliant, blah blah blah girl that only exists in my mind now.

Even though I have made this modicum of progress with my condition, I doubt I'll ever progress much further. I have insane goals for myself, a few I have never even mentioned due to the level of insanity, but I like that. There is a lot of me that thinks of 'content' as a four letter word akin to 'giving up.' I never want to be satisfied, not unsatisfied either, but a place between those words that we don't know yet, contentedly discontent and always striving to push myself just a little harder. If I stop this process, it's the same a death for me or at least the lack of what I consider life.

I've also long since come to the conclusion that you can't really ever save anyone, you can only provide them with opportunities to save themselves, which I suppose is a way to save them but that's a technicality. It's the level that I take this too that really is the unhealthy thing. I realize it, and I know that I could be called anything from 'too good of a guy' to 'an egotistical lunatic with delusions of grandeur' or worse but it's me, they're probably both true.

On my list for the future, a small part of it that I'll let you see to impress upon you the scale of weight and insanity that drives me:

Swim the English Channel
Motorcycle across South and Central America
Learn to drive a motorcycle
Get a degree in Particle Physics
Help out friends and family who are having financial troubles
Learn a musical instrument
Create or do something that will help with Climate Change and Energy Crisis
Write a book
Make a documentary
Inspire people to live the lives they want instead of the lives they think the should live

The list goes on like this forever, even though many of the things are for personal gratification (like learning a musical instrument) they are more because I feel like I am deficient in some way for not having already done them and that I need to be able to in case that particular skill is called upon at some point, to never fail when I am needed and often help when unexpected.

I was thinking about this when I was talking about some problems with friends and family on my walk today, that it was unreasonable for me to feel like I should be able to swoop in and stop foreclosures, bankruptcies, confusion, whatever. It's not that anyone says I should do this, it's that I feel like it is in me somewhere to be able to help in these ways and not doing it feels like I am doing something wrong. It may be that I can't change the world in the way i'd like to in some of my more grandiose goals but wouldn't it be wrong if I thought I might be capable? I feel like an awkward teenage Superman if I am one, one who tries but doesn't know how to wield his power effectively, but still I should get there in my mind. In the theme of like congregates with like, here's a link to a friends blog from today: Goals

And then of course there's this



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