Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen, Anthem
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
A Story. By Me.
An Unlikely Friendship
Milton Joseph was a simple man, with a plump, pot belly, liver-spotted head, and round red ears over powered by tufts of thick white hair. If he could transfer the hair from ears to his scalp, why he’d be all set, he’d exclaim from time to time to no one in particular.
Milton lived in a one bedroom on the corner of Larkspur Avenue, a bustling street at the epicentre of his small town. At eighty-seven, Milton was old – no question about it. He wasn’t middle aged or in his golden years, Milton Joseph was just plain old.
Occasionally he’d stand in front of his sturdy cheval mirror – the one that was a good decade or two older than his twitchy little landlord – and look at himself. Taut white socks over vein covered pruney knees. Sweat stained t-shirt clinging to sagging flesh. Droopy beige skin that hung in haloed sacks over sea green eyes.
He’d remember when his skin was taut, fresh. When rigid abs and chiselled features were all the currency he needed in the world. He’d remember this, and he’d smile, his yellowed, gap tooth grin proving more frightening than endearing. And at this, he’d smile wider, and sometimes he’d chuckle; a phlegm filled, shaky sound.
Sometimes he’d sleep for days on end, purposefully unplugging his phone and shutting off his alarm. Other times, he’d watch in awe as one sunrise after another floated across his window.
“Mr. Joseph,” little Eli Nestles from 12A would call from his front door, gingerly tapping his fingers against the wood. “Can I come over?”
Some days Milton didn’t hear Eli’s quiet taps. Other days fatigue and the comfort of his downy bed kept him from answering the door. But most days, most days Milton would drag his body up from the worn arm chair and limp to the hallway.
“It’s late, Eli, my boy,” he’d call out. “Shouldn’t you be in bed or doing homework now?”
“No, Mr. Joseph, “Eli would reply, as he always did. “I ain’t got nowhere else to be or nothing else to do.”
And Milton would busy himself with unlocking the many locks that littered his door; half grumbling, half smiling as he did.
He’d usher the little boy in, asking about his mother or school or if he saw the football game the other night.
Eli wouldn’t ever say much. Milton’s questions were greeted with a shrug or a grunt at best. So it was Milton that did most of the talking, while little Eli sat on the swivel chair gulping chocolate milk and scarfing down Oreo cookies that Milton brought just for that purpose.
He’d talk about the war and his two ex-wives. His daughter who’d moved halfway across the world and rarely ever called. He’d talk about his days spent as an Ad man and his dog, Lenny, the best dog a man could man ask for, who’d finally died twenty-three ago. He’d talk about his mother’s pumpkin pie and the smell of his dad’s cigars. He’d talk about his buddies in the twelfth infantry and sweet Suzy Jane who he would have married if it wasn’t for that damned Saul Barton. He’d talk about the time his brother, Calvin, almost burned down the house trying to start a campfire with stolen matches and about Pearl Barminter who kept bringing him homemade apple cobbler even though Milton hated apple cobbler as much as he hated Pearl Barminter. He talked about his yellow toenails and his damn hairy ears, his ever fading eyesight and his scratchy skin.
And Eli would listen intently, offering up a chocolate stained smile, empathetic little sigh or, rarely, piping up with a question or two.
“Do you miss your daughter a lot, Mr. Joseph?”
“Is that why your leg’s all funny?”
“Can’t you just tell her you don’t like apple cobbler?”
When 9 p.m. came, announced by the buzzing of Milton’s alarm (an always jarring reminder that it was time to take his pills), he’d hem and haw and coax Eli towards the door, promising, as he always did, that he could come over again real soon.
Eli would look up at him with those stoic brown eyes and then turn and trot slowly down the empty hallway to his mother’s apartment, his stick thin fingers tracing lines down the walls as he went.
Milton would watch him, just to make sure he made it back in safe and sound. Then he’d quietly shut his door, replace all the locks and swallow his nightly pills, an unwitting smile always making its way across his face.
And Eli, cocooned in blankets and curled in the corner of the bed he shared with his three brothers, would smile too.
Milton Joseph was a simple man, with a plump, pot belly, liver-spotted head, and round red ears over powered by tufts of thick white hair. If he could transfer the hair from ears to his scalp, why he’d be all set, he’d exclaim from time to time to no one in particular.
Milton lived in a one bedroom on the corner of Larkspur Avenue, a bustling street at the epicentre of his small town. At eighty-seven, Milton was old – no question about it. He wasn’t middle aged or in his golden years, Milton Joseph was just plain old.
Occasionally he’d stand in front of his sturdy cheval mirror – the one that was a good decade or two older than his twitchy little landlord – and look at himself. Taut white socks over vein covered pruney knees. Sweat stained t-shirt clinging to sagging flesh. Droopy beige skin that hung in haloed sacks over sea green eyes.
He’d remember when his skin was taut, fresh. When rigid abs and chiselled features were all the currency he needed in the world. He’d remember this, and he’d smile, his yellowed, gap tooth grin proving more frightening than endearing. And at this, he’d smile wider, and sometimes he’d chuckle; a phlegm filled, shaky sound.
Sometimes he’d sleep for days on end, purposefully unplugging his phone and shutting off his alarm. Other times, he’d watch in awe as one sunrise after another floated across his window.
“Mr. Joseph,” little Eli Nestles from 12A would call from his front door, gingerly tapping his fingers against the wood. “Can I come over?”
Some days Milton didn’t hear Eli’s quiet taps. Other days fatigue and the comfort of his downy bed kept him from answering the door. But most days, most days Milton would drag his body up from the worn arm chair and limp to the hallway.
“It’s late, Eli, my boy,” he’d call out. “Shouldn’t you be in bed or doing homework now?”
“No, Mr. Joseph, “Eli would reply, as he always did. “I ain’t got nowhere else to be or nothing else to do.”
And Milton would busy himself with unlocking the many locks that littered his door; half grumbling, half smiling as he did.
He’d usher the little boy in, asking about his mother or school or if he saw the football game the other night.
Eli wouldn’t ever say much. Milton’s questions were greeted with a shrug or a grunt at best. So it was Milton that did most of the talking, while little Eli sat on the swivel chair gulping chocolate milk and scarfing down Oreo cookies that Milton brought just for that purpose.
He’d talk about the war and his two ex-wives. His daughter who’d moved halfway across the world and rarely ever called. He’d talk about his days spent as an Ad man and his dog, Lenny, the best dog a man could man ask for, who’d finally died twenty-three ago. He’d talk about his mother’s pumpkin pie and the smell of his dad’s cigars. He’d talk about his buddies in the twelfth infantry and sweet Suzy Jane who he would have married if it wasn’t for that damned Saul Barton. He’d talk about the time his brother, Calvin, almost burned down the house trying to start a campfire with stolen matches and about Pearl Barminter who kept bringing him homemade apple cobbler even though Milton hated apple cobbler as much as he hated Pearl Barminter. He talked about his yellow toenails and his damn hairy ears, his ever fading eyesight and his scratchy skin.
And Eli would listen intently, offering up a chocolate stained smile, empathetic little sigh or, rarely, piping up with a question or two.
“Do you miss your daughter a lot, Mr. Joseph?”
“Is that why your leg’s all funny?”
“Can’t you just tell her you don’t like apple cobbler?”
When 9 p.m. came, announced by the buzzing of Milton’s alarm (an always jarring reminder that it was time to take his pills), he’d hem and haw and coax Eli towards the door, promising, as he always did, that he could come over again real soon.
Eli would look up at him with those stoic brown eyes and then turn and trot slowly down the empty hallway to his mother’s apartment, his stick thin fingers tracing lines down the walls as he went.
Milton would watch him, just to make sure he made it back in safe and sound. Then he’d quietly shut his door, replace all the locks and swallow his nightly pills, an unwitting smile always making its way across his face.
And Eli, cocooned in blankets and curled in the corner of the bed he shared with his three brothers, would smile too.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
School
Today I watched today trickle away. A strange day, busy with busy work while my mind was floating far.
I've been toying with the idea of going back to school for quite sometime now. Trouble is, were I to re-enter the hallowed halls of advanced education, I'd be going not for something practical (a JD, an MD, an MBA — although, really, who's to say that any of those are that practical these days), but for English. With no intention of becoming a teacher.
I'd have to take out loans and struggle to make it work. But I'd writing and reading and talking about writing and reading. My mind, truly, would be enriched.
And I would be happy.
Perhaps I would make new literary contacts. Perhaps I'd decide to get a Ph.D. or find a job as an editor. There are jobs out there that require writers: technical writers, grant writers, copywriters and freelancing for a variety of clients. Of course, I'd have to supplement my degree with training in whatever particular branch of writing I chose. But it could work.
I could spend my summers interning for a technical writer or taking courses on grant writing at the foundation center. Perhaps I could even find a part-time job in the field while I'm in school.
And who knows, maybe one day the book thing will come through. Despite my frustrations, I'll never stop writing books. I love them too much.
Even if no one else ever reads them, I'll always write them.
I have options, but they're all scary. It's going to require me leaping off the path my life is currently following and tumbling head first into a dense, imposing forrest of the unknown. It's going to mean debt and insecurity, fear and uncomfort.
But I'll be happy.
I've been toying with the idea of going back to school for quite sometime now. Trouble is, were I to re-enter the hallowed halls of advanced education, I'd be going not for something practical (a JD, an MD, an MBA — although, really, who's to say that any of those are that practical these days), but for English. With no intention of becoming a teacher.
I'd have to take out loans and struggle to make it work. But I'd writing and reading and talking about writing and reading. My mind, truly, would be enriched.
And I would be happy.
Perhaps I would make new literary contacts. Perhaps I'd decide to get a Ph.D. or find a job as an editor. There are jobs out there that require writers: technical writers, grant writers, copywriters and freelancing for a variety of clients. Of course, I'd have to supplement my degree with training in whatever particular branch of writing I chose. But it could work.
I could spend my summers interning for a technical writer or taking courses on grant writing at the foundation center. Perhaps I could even find a part-time job in the field while I'm in school.
And who knows, maybe one day the book thing will come through. Despite my frustrations, I'll never stop writing books. I love them too much.
Even if no one else ever reads them, I'll always write them.
I have options, but they're all scary. It's going to require me leaping off the path my life is currently following and tumbling head first into a dense, imposing forrest of the unknown. It's going to mean debt and insecurity, fear and uncomfort.
But I'll be happy.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Work and Go Crazy...or...Write and Starve
"I have one of two choices --- stay in the post office and go crazy, or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I've decided to starve."
-Charles Bukowski
Saturday evening, just as night began to tiptoe down and blanket New Jersey with her obsidian cover, I too found myself engulfed in darkness. Mind you, it was not the star-dotted, veiled shimmer of the crescent moon sky that descended upon me; rather it was a putrid fog of obscure hopes and gray shadow-lined dreams.
It was an average moment in most respects and why, in that instant, years of unfulfilled passions and fading creativity came bubbling up, wild like fire, to the surface, I don't know.
But they did.
And along with them came bitter-hot, stinging tears that poured down my face with great abandon. My body tensed, quivered and my head throbbed something awful. In mere moments I'd gone from retaining some semblance of inner peace to a sobbing, confused wreck of a woman.
Why? Because, I suppose, at that moment, buried deep beneath the various layers of my persona, the core, the crux of who I am broke through, grabbed tightly onto my subconscious and screamed with its rasping, mechanical voice:
"You're living a lie!"
Days spent sequestered behind a cubicle, watching new ideas, new stories, new characters die off as I photocopy another document, email another insipid spreadsheet. I feign joy when lunch time talk turns to celebrity crushes. I offer a plastic smile and give the illusion of eager participant in office gossip.
I go through the motions of life, but I'm not really living. In truth, I think I'm decaying.
The essence of who I am is this: I am a writer.
The very prospect of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and allowing a world solely of my creation to spill forth, fills me with unimaginable joy. Were I a prisoner locked away to fester in a rundown jail cell, a pencil and pad slipped between the paint chipped bars could easily transform my prison sentence into an artistic vacation.
In a very real sense, I'm at odds with myself. The societal push to constantly attain the biggest and the best has gotten through to me. I've bought into the lies. Which is why I switched my college major from English to Communications and took an office job in the Big City, where pristine skyscrapers draw your attention away from the aged and broken homeless man begging on the street.
Art, creativity, I gathered, was something that one couldn't pursue in the real world. Come graduation, it was time to grow up and suck it up. Get a nice corporate job, learn to use superficial terms like, "results-driven", "synergy", and "strategic", climb the ladder to the top, and then relish in all the material things you've attained.
Ttrouble is, that plan lacks passion, it lacks meaning. And it's only now that I realize I made a grave mistake in even attempting to follow that flawed life course.
Like a gay man who's yet to come out of the closet or a Victorian era housewife who longs for freedom, we can't deny who we really are. To do so would be a grave and, dare I say, dangerous task. One that strips away the opportunity for true joy and relegates a person to nothing more than a small cog in the machine of life, entirely apathetic as to when that machine breaks down.
I'm a writer. It's an essential part of who I am. To go the existential route: writing is what I was put on this earth to do.
And herein lies the rub: My writing can't survive if I haven't the time to do it. Yet I can't surrvive, if I haven't a job that provides an income to live off of.
I have faith that one day my writing will be my sustenance. That I will make a livable income off of it. But how do I get to that point?
And what of right now? As Bukowski put it, there are two choices: work and go crazy or write and starve.
He chose the latter, but I don't think I can. Nor can I accept the former.
But a writer friend of mine shared an interesting response to this rant.
"Writing," she said, "is more important than lots of things."
Now I just have to figure out what those things are.
-Charles Bukowski
Saturday evening, just as night began to tiptoe down and blanket New Jersey with her obsidian cover, I too found myself engulfed in darkness. Mind you, it was not the star-dotted, veiled shimmer of the crescent moon sky that descended upon me; rather it was a putrid fog of obscure hopes and gray shadow-lined dreams.
It was an average moment in most respects and why, in that instant, years of unfulfilled passions and fading creativity came bubbling up, wild like fire, to the surface, I don't know.
But they did.
And along with them came bitter-hot, stinging tears that poured down my face with great abandon. My body tensed, quivered and my head throbbed something awful. In mere moments I'd gone from retaining some semblance of inner peace to a sobbing, confused wreck of a woman.
Why? Because, I suppose, at that moment, buried deep beneath the various layers of my persona, the core, the crux of who I am broke through, grabbed tightly onto my subconscious and screamed with its rasping, mechanical voice:
"You're living a lie!"
Days spent sequestered behind a cubicle, watching new ideas, new stories, new characters die off as I photocopy another document, email another insipid spreadsheet. I feign joy when lunch time talk turns to celebrity crushes. I offer a plastic smile and give the illusion of eager participant in office gossip.
I go through the motions of life, but I'm not really living. In truth, I think I'm decaying.
The essence of who I am is this: I am a writer.
The very prospect of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and allowing a world solely of my creation to spill forth, fills me with unimaginable joy. Were I a prisoner locked away to fester in a rundown jail cell, a pencil and pad slipped between the paint chipped bars could easily transform my prison sentence into an artistic vacation.
In a very real sense, I'm at odds with myself. The societal push to constantly attain the biggest and the best has gotten through to me. I've bought into the lies. Which is why I switched my college major from English to Communications and took an office job in the Big City, where pristine skyscrapers draw your attention away from the aged and broken homeless man begging on the street.
Art, creativity, I gathered, was something that one couldn't pursue in the real world. Come graduation, it was time to grow up and suck it up. Get a nice corporate job, learn to use superficial terms like, "results-driven", "synergy", and "strategic", climb the ladder to the top, and then relish in all the material things you've attained.
Ttrouble is, that plan lacks passion, it lacks meaning. And it's only now that I realize I made a grave mistake in even attempting to follow that flawed life course.
Like a gay man who's yet to come out of the closet or a Victorian era housewife who longs for freedom, we can't deny who we really are. To do so would be a grave and, dare I say, dangerous task. One that strips away the opportunity for true joy and relegates a person to nothing more than a small cog in the machine of life, entirely apathetic as to when that machine breaks down.
I'm a writer. It's an essential part of who I am. To go the existential route: writing is what I was put on this earth to do.
And herein lies the rub: My writing can't survive if I haven't the time to do it. Yet I can't surrvive, if I haven't a job that provides an income to live off of.
I have faith that one day my writing will be my sustenance. That I will make a livable income off of it. But how do I get to that point?
And what of right now? As Bukowski put it, there are two choices: work and go crazy or write and starve.
He chose the latter, but I don't think I can. Nor can I accept the former.
But a writer friend of mine shared an interesting response to this rant.
"Writing," she said, "is more important than lots of things."
Now I just have to figure out what those things are.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Questions
Life is zooming by. Each day melts into the next. Busy with nothing and everything.
I have to do something. But what?
I have to do something. But what?
Monday, June 8, 2009
Goals
Sixty-eight pages. Sixty-eight pages of my new novel.
Only two-hundred and thirty-two more (at least) to go.
It's frustrating, tedious. I can't truly enjoy the writing process when my body is weary after a full days work, and my mind is wheeling—hoping, anticipating a day when the story is done and I can determine if it really is worth something to anyone else.
Sixty-eight pages. Sixty-eight pages of my new novel.
Well, that's sixty-eight pages more then I had before.
Only two-hundred and thirty-two more (at least) to go.
It's frustrating, tedious. I can't truly enjoy the writing process when my body is weary after a full days work, and my mind is wheeling—hoping, anticipating a day when the story is done and I can determine if it really is worth something to anyone else.
Sixty-eight pages. Sixty-eight pages of my new novel.
Well, that's sixty-eight pages more then I had before.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Writing
I'm writing a book. I don't expect it to be the next Great American Novel, but I hope I manage to get it published. If I do, then I will be...validated, I suppose?
I long to write. It's my passion, the very notion that takes over my (nearly) every waking thought.
Bad day at work? Write about it. Funny Movie? Write about it. Tiny beetle crawling, slowly and timidly, up the wall behind me as I wait for the subway? Write about it.
The written word overtakes me. There is something about transfering life, in all of its fucked up, tragic, beauty onto a stark white page of nothingness, that is enticing - amazing, even.
The ability to create, to remove the human condition from the tangible to the intangible, is just short of astounding.
To allow a sheltered upper-class frat boy to find himself somewhere in the life story of a street walking prostitute. To let a portly, fifty-something divorcee identify with a self-confident, twenty-something model. To help a conservative Southern "Good Old Boy" see a tiny spark of his life experience in that of a long dead Black sharecropper.
Literature, in my opinion, is the link between them and us, was and is. Its the connection between one isolated human experience and the other.
A good writer, a talented one, is able to take that obscure experience of human life, whether it is clothed in the garments of a Superhero, a wicked villainess, a street urchin, a Fortune 500 executive, or a mad man, and make it relateable to all.
A good writer can transform, translate, transport.
He or she is able to reach deeply into that obscure part of all of us and find a connection, a key that unlocks our frozen facades of plastic smiles and meaningless words, to discover the real us...the genuineness behind the lies.
A good writer can connect us, one to the other, and help us to see life for all it truly is.
Am I good writer? Are my words worthy of being funneled out into society, for all to see?
I don't know. Most days I don't think so.
But maybe, if you're reading this, they are.
I long to write. It's my passion, the very notion that takes over my (nearly) every waking thought.
Bad day at work? Write about it. Funny Movie? Write about it. Tiny beetle crawling, slowly and timidly, up the wall behind me as I wait for the subway? Write about it.
The written word overtakes me. There is something about transfering life, in all of its fucked up, tragic, beauty onto a stark white page of nothingness, that is enticing - amazing, even.
The ability to create, to remove the human condition from the tangible to the intangible, is just short of astounding.
To allow a sheltered upper-class frat boy to find himself somewhere in the life story of a street walking prostitute. To let a portly, fifty-something divorcee identify with a self-confident, twenty-something model. To help a conservative Southern "Good Old Boy" see a tiny spark of his life experience in that of a long dead Black sharecropper.
Literature, in my opinion, is the link between them and us, was and is. Its the connection between one isolated human experience and the other.
A good writer, a talented one, is able to take that obscure experience of human life, whether it is clothed in the garments of a Superhero, a wicked villainess, a street urchin, a Fortune 500 executive, or a mad man, and make it relateable to all.
A good writer can transform, translate, transport.
He or she is able to reach deeply into that obscure part of all of us and find a connection, a key that unlocks our frozen facades of plastic smiles and meaningless words, to discover the real us...the genuineness behind the lies.
A good writer can connect us, one to the other, and help us to see life for all it truly is.
Am I good writer? Are my words worthy of being funneled out into society, for all to see?
I don't know. Most days I don't think so.
But maybe, if you're reading this, they are.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Nothing
Sitting, legs curled beneath me on the slightly broken vintage wooden chair, eyes glazed over and fingers frozen in place above the keyboard.
"What are you doing," he asks, from his spot on the bed.
I pause. I swallow.
"Nothing," I respond, "Nothing."
~~
Excerpt, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus:
"In certain situations, replying "nothing" when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man....But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity."
"What are you doing," he asks, from his spot on the bed.
I pause. I swallow.
"Nothing," I respond, "Nothing."
~~
Excerpt, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus:
"In certain situations, replying "nothing" when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man....But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity."
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Time is Fleeting...
If I can't even find time to post, how will I find time to revolutionize my life and drag myself out of coffee-overloaded, carpal tunnel inducing, soul draining cubicle drudgery?
What the hell am I supposed to do?
What the hell am I supposed to do?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Everyone's Mad
“'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'
''How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”
-Alice in Wonderland
'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'
''How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”
-Alice in Wonderland
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
And So It Begins
When your life is consumed with simply surviving, can you really call it living?
Ok, that was a thoroughly misleading introduction. Contrary to what one might assume from that first sentence, I am not some undereducated single mother of four who works three jobs just to keep a roof over her family’s head. Nor am I an impoverished blind man in a third world country who rummages daily through trash cans for some scraps of a meal. No, get this —I’m an upper middle class, fairly intelligent, not all too unattractive, twenty-something with a secure job, a loving family, sweet boyfriend and a couple of really great friends.
So, what’s my issue? The last thing I want is to be some spoiled brat of a Gen-Yer who’s complaining over a life that, let’s face it, a good chunk of people would find enviable.
Comparatively, my life is freaking awesome.
But, you know what—I’m restless. I moved to New York two years ago in hopes of...I don’t know...finding myself.
God, was that just the most clichéd tripe? But, you know, that’s me —a walking cliché.
Anyway, instead of finding myself, instead of becoming immersed in a world of bohemia, a world of never ending coffee shop conversations, of short stories written over one too many glasses of red wine and nights that blend into morning—a world I’m not entirely sure really exists—instead, I find myself consumed with a typical, draining 9 - 5 job and the daily monotony of laundry, grocery shopping, and other insipid trivialities that leave me precious little time to pursue anything creative or worthwhile.
At days end, my mind is so exhausted from keeping up the facade of happy little corporate hamster and funnelling all of my artistic energy into copying and collating, that all I want to do is come back to my apartment and crawl into bed with a glass of wine and MTV. I can’t force myself to think any longer, so I watch the most mindless television there is—Real Housewives of New York, anyone?—until, eventually, I drift off to sleep, already gearing up to do it all over again the next day.
I’m afraid that one day I’m going to wake up and see that my life has already passed me by. I’ll be 65 with a retirement plan, a husband I rarely see, and 2 kids that I don’t know.
Trouble is—I don’t see any way around it. There are so many people with missed dreams and passions squashed by necessity. Why should I be any different?
Answer: I shouldn’t.
But, fuck it, I’m going to be. At least that’s the plan. I have no clue how. Or if it’s even going to work. But I’m going to try. I’ve got to shake off my complacency, my fear of the unknown, and the masochistic comfort I find in the organized cubicle that is my life.
This is my blog, my existential crisis, my journey.
Header provided by freewebpageheaders.com
Ok, that was a thoroughly misleading introduction. Contrary to what one might assume from that first sentence, I am not some undereducated single mother of four who works three jobs just to keep a roof over her family’s head. Nor am I an impoverished blind man in a third world country who rummages daily through trash cans for some scraps of a meal. No, get this —I’m an upper middle class, fairly intelligent, not all too unattractive, twenty-something with a secure job, a loving family, sweet boyfriend and a couple of really great friends.
So, what’s my issue? The last thing I want is to be some spoiled brat of a Gen-Yer who’s complaining over a life that, let’s face it, a good chunk of people would find enviable.
Comparatively, my life is freaking awesome.
But, you know what—I’m restless. I moved to New York two years ago in hopes of...I don’t know...finding myself.
God, was that just the most clichéd tripe? But, you know, that’s me —a walking cliché.
Anyway, instead of finding myself, instead of becoming immersed in a world of bohemia, a world of never ending coffee shop conversations, of short stories written over one too many glasses of red wine and nights that blend into morning—a world I’m not entirely sure really exists—instead, I find myself consumed with a typical, draining 9 - 5 job and the daily monotony of laundry, grocery shopping, and other insipid trivialities that leave me precious little time to pursue anything creative or worthwhile.
At days end, my mind is so exhausted from keeping up the facade of happy little corporate hamster and funnelling all of my artistic energy into copying and collating, that all I want to do is come back to my apartment and crawl into bed with a glass of wine and MTV. I can’t force myself to think any longer, so I watch the most mindless television there is—Real Housewives of New York, anyone?—until, eventually, I drift off to sleep, already gearing up to do it all over again the next day.
I’m afraid that one day I’m going to wake up and see that my life has already passed me by. I’ll be 65 with a retirement plan, a husband I rarely see, and 2 kids that I don’t know.
Trouble is—I don’t see any way around it. There are so many people with missed dreams and passions squashed by necessity. Why should I be any different?
Answer: I shouldn’t.
But, fuck it, I’m going to be. At least that’s the plan. I have no clue how. Or if it’s even going to work. But I’m going to try. I’ve got to shake off my complacency, my fear of the unknown, and the masochistic comfort I find in the organized cubicle that is my life.
This is my blog, my existential crisis, my journey.
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