Which Box Today?

I find it really hard to cope with life without trying to put myself into a box, trying to find a peg to hang my coat on. Buddhist, Existentialist, Liberal, Non-Conformist, Alcoholic, Addict, Marxist, Poet, Gardener, Depressive... When people ask me "What do you do?", I'm at a loss for words. Richard Ashcroft put it as "I'm a million different people, from one day to the next" and, at times, this sums it up for me. Not knowing which of my labels I'm going to wake up with. 

I've been told that I can use this position to my advantage, that I can live as a free spirit. No ties, no kids, no family except my parents. But the trouble with this sort of existence is the lack of roots. I feel a palpable sense of falling down a cliff face, grabbing for a finger hold, a butterfly in my chest that flutters, not with a sense of excited possibility, but with an anxiety of failure and nothing to fall back onto.

I try to live as simple-a-life as possible. Not, as some see, through laziness and apathy, but because over-stimulation tends to send my mind into a whirl. I dream of a very romanticized life: either crofting in the Highlands; taking refuge in a monastary; growing my own and living off the surplus. I make such mental plans, but doubt and fear always stop me from putting them into action. Or rather, I search too hard for barriers to put in the way, rather that just DOING. 

Perhaps it is the lack of roots that causes this instability. Or maybe its fear of failure. Or some Generation X confusion over what the world is supposed to be and my place in it. I feel caught between craving the stability and comfort that conformity promises; and my belief that there is so much more out there, completeley different ways of seeing and conceptualizing the world (or de-conceptualizing it). This tends to leave me looking for philosophical loop-holes, reading past works, searching for that golden nugget that, when I find it, makes that penny drop with a satisfying clink and I finally have clarity.