I'm Jenga'd

I'm Jenga'd. It feels like everyone is taking bits out and then piling them up upon my back again. They remind me of spines do Jenga towers, and mine is currently all a bit unstable. I'm not blameless in this, in fact I can't blame anyone but me: not sleeping enough, doing too many things, not saying 'no', staying in 4th around tight corners. Mea culpa indeed.

Personally, I adopt the 'No quarter' approach to Jenga; a mercenary style, whereby there is only one tactic - to make the tower as unstable as possible - generally by removing the outer blocks, especially on the bottom few rows. If you don't lose, someone else will quite soon. It's an aggressive gambit, and I play pool in the same way: I'd rather lose an exciting game than win a boring one. Go for broke. It is only a game.

The trouble is that approaching everything in a similar way, not just unimportant trivialities, means that life becomes Jenga-fied and right now I'm feeling that collapse is imminent. Life isn' t always a game.

Is this merely the embodiment of 'Live Now, Sleep Later' 24-7 culture - searching, and searching ever the more frantically as more and more things turn out to be not what I'm looking for?

I appreciate that rest is important and good, but I'm restless, and cannot help but push on, going to nitro where necessary and living life to try and optimise; carpe diem, although living for the day is too shortsighted, and it should be living today for today and tomorrow. The fact is that I can not only survive living in this 'free-form' organic way, but manage quite well... It's a mighty-fine balancing act, but it's more exciting that way, or is it just less boring?

It works well until bad things happen which were not factored in. Today I heard that a friend of mine from home has died of a heart attack - he was 26. In many ways it makes me want to do even more, to speed up and achieve things that I think are worth something, something which I currently cannot claim for the last 5 years. Maybe one day I'll see it differently.

I have passed the milestone of one third of my life expectancy, and what have I done of worth? It has been a time of learning, but now must come the time of doing, or the learning was of no worth.

The only way out I can see is in and through God, and I don't know how that's going to work, but without God my tower's coming down baby! I need God to help me walk and not get weary, but it is easier to say 'feets don't fail me now' than ask for that help. I also need wisdom on asking for the right things... means needing to know where I need help... means admission of weakness and failure.

Hopefully then the Spirit will infill my Jenga'd spirit and expand to support it when bits are removed, a bit like cavity wall insulation or Mr Muscle Foamer. Thus reinforced, life can go on apace. I'm quite possibly the first person to describe the Holy Spirit as the cavity wall insulation of my Jenga tower, and whilst people may obviously misinterpret or be rather confused by this, it works for me.