Pandora's Riptide

Creative life's a funny old game, isn't it?  

I spend my time battering my senses stupid, 19 hours a day awake, 5 hours a night asleep for 7 days a week, pausing for only the occasional breather, bend my brain round on itself until it begs for mercy or sleep (whichever comes first), continually push and strive towards an all-encompassing satisfaction, and due to the perception [delusion?] that I seem to have a vague idea of where I am going, I refuse to stop for too long in case the path shifts again. Which inevitably it does. It changes from concrete to quicksand without a moment's warning, many times a day.

Then, I turn into Pandora, and there's a box - my curiosity gets the better of me. All ills, evils, toils and burdens descend at once, and as much as I am a strong swimmer, I am more than acutely aware I have no buoyancy or help and the riptide is in danger of pulling me under. But luckily for me, I happen to know there is a certain geography to surviving a riptide, you see: swim parallel to the shore or try to float it out. Both options will take you away from your current destination but you will of course, still be alive. Mmmmm. Swim parallel, float or fight the current? Off-course and alive; on-target, but dead? Not sure - only time will tell.

But back to being Pandora. There is, of course, one last thing at the very bottom of that box: Hope.  

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. To hope is to wish for something with the expectation of the wish being fulfilled, a key condition in unrequited love. Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude.

And that belief and thought pattern, my learned friends, is surely a buoyancy aid to be held onto.

Onwards.