Every day and every night is exactly the same for me. It's a rehearsed scene that I play differently each take. Like a nightmare version of the movie Groundhog's Day. I have the same paralyzing fears, the same bewitching weaknesses, the very same stories to tell.
Notice that I don't often speak of others here? What does that tell you about my thought process?
I'm ready to do the big thing. Make a leap. Actually, it's a tough time to be dramatic, because the world is ready to put a face on the one that will be its end. So whining about poor, poor pitiful me isn't really going to rake the old muck too much now is it? But I'm willing to take up the challenge. I need someone...that's strange, I was going to type the word "something" but "someone" just kind of came out. Anyway, I need someone to live for, something greater than the me that obviously isn't inspiring the hell out of me right now.
A cause, a belief, a person. Someone to lay my offenses down in front of, who can hear the delicately whispered acts of my contrition and not judge me too harshly. Perhaps I just need a villain. Or maybe I am the villain, and I need a hero to make me complete.
Every night like this, every night I'm supposed to be out looking for a wife that I spend inside, I feel like a little bit of me has become more isolated. It feels permanent. The parts I lose aren't ever coming back.
I talked to a married friend, and he asked me what I was doing home on a Saturday night. The honest answer was too sad to discuss, so I just told him I was doing nothing. I had a good day despite sleeping too late and not accomplishing anything of substance, and I wasn't about to get all touchy about not having a date. But it's true that I've been doing nothing. Except becoming a cliche. And proving all my detractors right.
I learned a few new songs on the guitar that I wield like a cap gun at a bank robbery. I only ate one real meal, and that consisted almost entirely of the parts of a pig that even starving, feral animals are wise enough to ignore. Then I washed it back with the new water. Let me just call it Coke and cease to be surprised by my consistent tooth decay (I like that people with bad teeth don't speak in euphemistic terms, there is no tooth decline or tooth impoverishment). I spent time the way Bill Gates spends twenties. But it was all at this desk, looking into this screen. Just like the one you're sitting at, I bet.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about my own choices. I just have to put things in proper perspective considering that I have a job to resign from, car insurance to ascertain, a new job to fill, a business to attempt resurrection of, debt the size of a before ad, and the social skills of a rodent suddenly awakened from his sleep in the bottom of a tea-kettle by the wrinkled, gnarled hand of a thirty-year alcoholic.
I want to be clever, and romantic, and inspirational, but I also want to be mildly successful. There is no new thing, no starting point. Not this time. It's all the same old songs, just played by a slightly older, and more road-weary band. And the worst part is, they're all cover songs.
manic enough to know better
There is a little ache at the base of my skull. It's not like any headache I've had before, and I'm almost positive it is a result of the recent quandary I've been in regarding work. I need to work, I want to play. I don't like sitting around at home all the time(if being on disability has taught me anything, it's that). I lull too easily. My sleep has been up around the ten hours a night mark. Been a while since I've done that.
I could sell cell phones. I could pretend that self-employment equals self-enjoyment. I might have to work at the Wall Street Journal. that is funny.
Button-down shirt hides tattoos. Change from stainless-steel tongue stud to clear. No more "Fuck Art, Let's Mosh" T-Shirts.
I can live with all of this.
But when do I become self-sustaining?
It never occurred to me in high school that the molds I didn't want to fit into on general principal could have been used and thrown away.
Imagine me as a college graduate, I'd be devastating to the status quo. If I was full of knowledge instead of shit, I could turn anyone on. Light up the minds and bathe in the glow of their euphoria.
I guess I've always lacked focus, except when I was nine and wanted to be a cop like my dad. Even that life would have been more stable. I have romantic notions of a blue-collar, but I wouldn't ever be truly happy being collared at all.
