what the fuck?

what the fuck is going on?

feel like i'm headed straight to both loserville AND unhapinessville.  that's right.  sounds like it's time for another talk with god... or old adam...

god: what's up?

adam: just thinking about good old 29... i remember how unhappy i was. 

god: always?

adam: pretty much.  at the time, my happiness all wrapped up in my life narrative.  and as i felt it was fucked, my happiness wasn't really anywhere either. 

there was in my thinking at the time, that i needed to "deserve" to be happy.  like happiness was the reward for good work... and without good work, there could be no happiness.  i think i was 29 when i first even heard the word "bon vivant", or understood it as a concept.  that people could truly vary in terms of what they could make out of any day, any situation.  i realized that THAT was a good goal... beyond all the others i had. 

and it was pretty clear that if you waited to deserve happiness, you could never be a bon vivant.  so i was noticing these things... trying to piece them together.  but some days would be bad.  just make no sense - my behavior totally out of wack with what i believe.  they made me sad... because they seemed like such a waste, and by extension i felt like a waste as well.  during this period, i legitimately had watched every tv remotely "worthwhile" tv show made.  legitimately.

i could also see battlelines being drawn, at least i felt.  i could see that my twenties were receding, and that my 30's - like it or not - would need to be about a career if I wanted to establish something that could last.  at least that's how it seemed at the time.  and everywhere i looked people agreed - economists talked about the effects of long term unemployment, emotionally and practically.  people who graduate into a recession tend never to recover in terms of money and advancement. 

and i just couldn't see how to make the corporate life work. i couldn't figure out any other kind of life that would support me, and potentially a family, someday.  i just couldn't see the way that it was going to work for me. 

but one thing i knew - is that i was slowly getting more and more fucked in the head.  and i just didn't want that... if i ended up penniless in a gutter, i didn't want to be unhappy.  i wanted to be able to look at the stars, at least.

god: that's a lot of heavy stuff. 

adam: yeah. i'm a god-given ruminator, and when what i'm ruminating on are my perceived failures... well, fuck.  so around 29, i decided to ruminate on something else.  on how to, everyday, make my life more "bon vivant," and others too. 

because even the negative people, the awesome negative people, they still enjoy things. in a twisted way. fine.  but they find the bon.

i figured if i could make the bon vivant thing work, then i could pursue whatever i wanted... and it would be alright. 

god: anything else?  seems like you want to talk...

adam: yeah, it's a regular "it's me, margret" moment over here.

the other thing i thought about all the time... was being special.  when i was younger, i used to love the song of john lennon's "instant karma": who do you think you are? a superstar? well right you are! 

totally convinced that we are all special. perhaps me more than others. as that disappeared... i started seeing the idea of specialness *everywhere*: literally every tv drama i watched was about being special, and having a destiny.  heroes is probably the most absurd version; but also lost, caprica, and really ever cop show - i mostly think people like cop shows because they get to watch gruesome deaths.  but also because the cops are like heroes.  they have a purpose, a skillset, and they help the world.  every show is basically the story of the matrix; the heroe's journey... perhaps it is always like this.

but at 29, i saw it everywhere.  and i saw my age as the crucial time between belief in specialness and destiny, and just the compromse of life... and i saw that perhaps it was my spoiled generation, but also across all generations, and all times; everyone and ever culture has the hero journey stories.  and i wondered why we needed to hear that sotry over and over again... is it because it is seductive yet, in the end empty?  so we can only get it story form?  or is because it reflects a truth that we all know and yet never act on?

these questions were important.  because i felt, i knew that i wasn't allowing myself to really think freely.  for some reason, i felt i couldn't really allow myself to think freely, to think the best of myself.  to go for my "destiny"...

there is a scene in zack and mirni make a porno where the main character decides he wants to be a filmaker. and the girlfriend says, "you look different.  you're cting different."  just that one decisions.  and kevin smith, the director of that movie, said that that was based on what happened to him. 

that's the hero journey... maybe?  not much of a journey i guess.  but it's the hero transformation... where nothing has changed yet everythig has. what is that thing that will transform me?  seriously.  is it out there?  or will it be one good day followed by  bad ones for the rest of my life?

am i just stalling?  just stalling?  stalling?  i can imagine doing everyhting in my life differently, from today forward... and yet it disappears so quickly. so quickly.  i often thought about someone capturing the good... etched in wood, and have it aorund me at all times.  jsut something there... to remember it all with... to carry with me into the great unknown of ever day.

god:  so what happened?

adam:  i don't know.  i was at a crossroads. 

-29