Blue Ribbons and Participation Trophies for those who Need them:

Blue Ribbons and Participation Trophies for those who Need them:

A request for decency and civility to return to civil service.

Not your usual work, but what can be at this hour on a Saturday? This isn't when people — at least not the people I identify as my people — have any business trying to do any real work. Yet, here we are, with a Government shut down and a Captain screaming he's going to go full speed to teach that iceberg a damn lesson. It's madness in all directions, a sobering moment under grey, New England, skies. It's a hard moment to be a patriot, to hang onto the dwindling fire of hope, and it's damn near too dark to try and pen any words at all. However, like the progress we so desperately need to start making, here I am. I'm trying, the same as I'm asking the rest of everyone else to do. After all, what's the point in asking for something that you, yourself, are not actually willing to do? 

This kind of spiteful thinking, that you've any right to ask for what you yourself would not give, is what's choking America out while the giant slumbers. Airports, something I consider of great personal importance as of late, are jammed. Tax returns are delayed, assuming they come at all, and the even the sun seems to be in active protest in the northern skies. Two days of it since October, and who can blame it? Coming out these days, regardless of how you mean it, seems a dangerous endeavor. From stepping out your door, to stepping into yourself, the world seems ready as ever to bite and bludgeon you just for being a part of it. This, ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and others, is not how we make it — and we've got limited days to do that as it is.

It's just that, the winding sands of the hourglass, the ever present black rabbit, that makes the participation so important. Man — and by that I mean humankind, not just Man in that, cotton-haired, raisins, who sit in fancy leather chairs making decisions without pay at the moment sense of the word — has got to be an active participant in change. There's no greater enemy of progress than apathy and nothing rots the ripe fruit faster than a plant who's not trying to grow. There's only so many hours you can while away in nothing, whittling down your existence without a passion to drive you, banking on the blind hope that things will go anywhere without you doing something. Sure, maybe you'll get lucky, maybe you'll invoke Chaos Theory and your sneeze will change the world in some unmentionable way, but why sit back on your laurels when you can do so much more?

You're a human being, capable of impossible things. You can think, adapt, and change. You can be more than your environment, you can be more than your job, your apartment, or your vocation. Even I, who would likely drown if not penning words in some fashion, can be more than a writer. Don't get me wrong, I must write if I want to have any hope of feeling fulfilled, but that's a personal assessment of the situation and likely the only recourse left to a human too bleary eyed and unsavory for "real work". It's an understanding I have for the life I want to live and what I must do in order to have that life. It's being an active participant in my own existence. It's taking the wheel and saying "This ride is mine, mine, mine." It's being responsible for myself and not waiting for all the lights on my path turn green before I even bother pulling out of the metaphorical driveway.

I wonder then, why so much of Washington remains mired behind red lights and calls that traumatic behavior any kind of progress. America has become the jester on the world stage, a peasant locked in the stocks and worthy of being stoned with rotten fruit for crimes to heinous to let loose from the mouth. If we're not the butt of the joke, we're Night on Bald Mountain; a piece of music believed to be the very work of the Devil himself and something that she be cause to cover the ears less the infernal malady spread to the heart and rot us from the inside out.

We're trying to shame people for dancing and, apt and inappropriate as it is, we're calling out Motherfucker in forums deserving of more respect. We're engaging in mud fights with pigs — slinging shit like arrows in the vain hope of striking some kind of bullseye. This kind of thing, it's not helping anyone. It's making it all just look that much worse. It's making the rest of the world see the American people as little more than rabid coyotes responding deforestation by taking to roaming the streets in packs. Just look at Hollywood. It's only a matter of time before the beasts figure out how to walk upright, get jobs as Baristas and begin feeding on the rich when they go to order a latte. Soon, the hills and heights of that city will be unlivable as they will be populated by little more than lycanthropes. It'll be hell for everyone on a full moon, worse than it currently is that's for sure, and we'll have no National Guard to call on because they're too busy being deployed to build a fence.

Shit's getting way too real on the West End of the world. Don't get me wrong, there are high spots. We're pardoning drug offenders in droves because we've finally figured out that those who want to get stoned by way of a plant aren't the same boogeymen as the stone throwers themselves.  We're electing rational minds to those same fancy seats and finally starting to see some kind of reasonable representation of our populace among our elected officials. We're shielding the flame against the high winds in this blizzard of shame, we're standing up and saying No more, not me, this is not enough. We're getting hungry and growing ill content to squabble over scraps — and all the while whole cities are going without water. 

Trickle down compassion only works when there's compassion to trickle down and, quite honestly, I don't know how anyone can be expected to cultivate compassion in a world that barely wants to participate anymore. We're in the age where no one should be feeling left out, where everyone gets a trophy just for playing in sports games, but adulthood and civil service seem like slogging careers with no real point but to line pockets, spin shit, eat silk, and die.  It's a fight over the color of a dress that's been blown to biblical proportions and applied like the broad stroke beginnings of a Bob Ross painting — only nobody's trying to fill in the shape with any kind of blending. Every line is a boundary drawn in the sand and nobody cares enough to let the water wash them all away. It would be an ironic thing, considering that if we keep on the way we are, we're all going to be underwater soon anyway, but the comedy ends when you understand that in the sea, we're not top of the food chain anymore.

I say start handing out participation trophies to politicians — an idea I can't even take credit for, as it came streaking into my brain, riding on a lightning bolt like Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Kubrik's Dr. Strangelove — but only if they're actually participating. That's not to say pushing some team sport agenda, where ideas are color coded and burned at once if they don't match up with the side you want to support, but actually making a point to serve as a representative of the constituents who elected you. To those constituents then, I say, quit thinking it's all only about you. If it's a dog eat dog world, which is what your actions really seem to say, you've got no hope against those same roving packs of coyotes. Be civil so that politics, like police work, can return to being a civil service. Remember that it's it's a role taken on not unlike the firefighters and firefighters who don't do their job? Well. That's how everything burns when you're the one who neglected something and got it all caught on fire — and it seems to me that's just what we're doing right now.

I'm not saying it's all bad eggs and reptiles, the same as I'm not saying every badge and a gun lets it go straight to their head. I'm not saying no one's trying, I'm not saying that anyone is worse than any other, but let's be real for a minute and consider what happens to a bird who lets an argument break out between its wings. Let's look at what happens when our colloquial "boys in blue" bust down doors out of misplaced initiative and shoot unarmed civilians in their own homes. Let's look at when responsibility to the public overlooked and every call to go on the hunt for the boogeyman mobilizes the mobs. All it does is fan the flames, encourage Nazis to return to the streets, and little boys to take Supreme Court seats never mind get a seat on Air Force One. Let's look at what happens when the news works the angle of agendas rather than reporting actual news — whatever that even means anymore, I'm not sure anyone knows. Let's look at what happens when we're lynching effigies and then crying when people don't love who we think they should. Let's look at the way we, again, try and slander people for dancing or selling their bodies like any of us are any kind of moral authority.

This is what non-participation looks like. This is what happens when you're not contributing, or hell, even listening. This is what happens when you live in an echo chamber, where your right way is the only right way for everyone and you'll gun down any perceived threat to the contrary.  This is what happens when you can't live and let live, where every hill is the one you've chosen to die on, and you're pitching a fit about the way you're using your lives. This is what happens when civility has died and decency is the most uncommon commodity. This is what happens in a world where you're the only one who can ever be right for everyone, where lies that justify your bias mean more than truth, where the American way has become nothing more than consume, shit, shoot first, and die in a pile of money.

I don't know about you, but this isn't the America was taught to believe we were meant to be when I cracked open a history book at an impressionable young age. Absolutely there are arguments to be made for the fact that the road to Manifest Destiny is paved with corpses and held together with more blood than mortar. Absolutely, you can say that homo sapiens have been hardwired to murder and exterminate everything around them from their first days upright. Absolutely you can say that their side, is the bad side, that the Pandits — the wise of the world — have no real interest in it anymore. Absolutely you can say why should I bother, because nobody's going to bother for me...and that's why nobody deserves the trophy.

It's not you vs. the world. It never has been and, still, that's exactly what we've made it. The race we've turned life into has only one ending for all of us and no one here escapes that. No one. Not even Jesus cheated Death and, no matter your concept of what comes after or whose immortal soul needs saving, the notion that your only hope of going forward is to dig in your heels and antagonize everyone into agreeing with you? Well, that just fucks everyone and makes even well meaning pacifists want to take up sticks and start clubbing the villains. It robs the world of compassion and consideration. It closes the doors on churches during hurricanes. It locks up the hearts and minds and the whole damn population and gives us no hope of winning — not even all the stupid things we've chosen to wage war on.

 I suggest we step up and start living this notion that no one, actually no one, gets left behind. I suggest we be more than our petty bickering about who's right and wrong for you and me, but instead just let people do right for themselves. I suggest we leave behind color coded arguments and opt for politicians with monochromia. I say we stop wielding the world like it's a hammer and everything is a nail. I suggest we stop trying to be right for anyone but ourselves. I suggest we start being worthy of the same participation trophies we're teaching children to expect and stop handing out them out only to the team players on elementary school fields. I suggest you remember we're all on the same team. I suggest we stop seeing everyone and everything as your enemy and just start letting people live. I suggest you stop running people down for fifteen dollar manicures. I suggest, really and truly, it's high time we all get better and start trying to get along or we're all going to go nowhere.

The shit's getting high and nobody's got gills designed to filter feces. Please, let civility and decency come back. Please, step down out of your rage, even if the world's feeding you plenty of reasons to be angry. I'll step up and give you your trophy, but only if you're contributing to the tomorrow where we're not all jeering hunchbacks in the shadows. If you can't, or won't do that? Well, then I implore you to do the one decent thing people like you and I can do: Sit in the back and shut the fuck up.  

Which is exactly what I'm about to go do.

Yours truly, from under grey skies,

This Writer who thinks America's a whole lot less than it could be.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Americans:

Dear My Fellow Americans,

It's somewhere just after dawn. I couldn't tell you exactly when because I have no use for clocks at this hour and it's largely irrelevant anyway. This letter has been three years in the works and has taken on at least six different drafts. Each one barely makes it past the declaration that it is, in fact, written for all of us. There are reasons for this aplenty mind you — and not least of which is that counting myself among you is a bile inducing thought. However, as our monuments and parks sit in a state of rot, if not entirely cared for out of passion for preservation and the outside world, I feel I am out of time. So, here I am, just after dawn, swallowing down the sick feeling to put words down on a page. It's the only recourse left, the only hope for a shark who finds too much trash in the waves, and I must write or I will drown in this tsunami of garbage that has become the America I once knew.

I used to ask myself where we went wrong. Was it the mongrel dogs in Washington, the crooked, cut rate, dime store, bullshit artists whose only real talent is whipping the masses into a frenzy in ways that would make a pasty chef blush? Was it the way that we've really run with the age old adage that There's no such thing as bad press? Is it the, tail chasing, maelstrom of madness that is materialism and the idea that the metric of success is having a bigger T.V than the neighbors you can only see when peeking through bent Venetian blinds? Is it because we've lost sight of the forest and can only see the trees? Is it because we've become upright beasts and treat the social hierarchy like it's some representational food chain? Is it because we've started living in echo chambers, rejecting things we don't like in the blind pursuit of confirmation bias until we're akin to something like the main character in Altered States?

If not for the few high spots I've been able to find while surfing this wave of syringes and feces, these are the kind of thoughts that would keep me up at night. If not for good (according to me), Kentucky, bourbon, strong coffee, and the ripping back of the curtain on digestible drugs, I might not have never noticed these things — and for that I used to wonder if my life might have been better. The ignorant sure smile more, at least when they're not too busy looking like red-faced Howler Monkeys. I learned, perhaps too quickly however, that this, like a life designed to be lived in these Godless hours of threadbare functionality, was not for me.

Better to live with eyes open, even if what you're seeing sometimes feels like a waking nightmare, a fever dream fueled by too much cactus and tequila.

Perhaps that's a bit of where this edge comes from, as it is a thing I have very recently gone over. Reciting correspondence to the vestiges of hope I see, few as they are, has littered the landscape of my thoughts with words that have a fierce demand to make their way out. They, like the democracy we cling to through our perverted lens, are at the core of what keeps me going as grey skies struggle to find some kind of color. Perhaps it is loud music, the fuel in the tank and the driving thrum in my ears that keeps my feet moving. Perhaps it's the fact that I didn't spike either of the three cups of coffee I've had and made this mistake of watching what passes for news this morning. Perhaps it's because I'm stuck in a house that's too big, in a place where prohibition runs rampant and the laws concerning alcohol echo the fact that not even the streets here can come before God...

The truth is, my fellow dogs, it's because even the fleas are starting to jump ship to avoid all the mange.

Calling what we have now any kind of Democracy is akin to saying we have any kind of sexual education that isn't mired in some Puritanical fear of what we get up to after dark. Calling what passes for Love of Country is not too different than the Sunday, Church skipping, Christians who call for the murder and shame of people who just want to live their lives. Calling what we have as a collective 'common sense' is the same kind of misnomer as suggesting Michigan has clean water — and it's no wonder that place is leading the way toward the Fury Road future as a result. The problem is that we say all these things like they're somehow true just because we say them and, heartbreaking as it is to pen these words or transcribe them onto this blog that stands as a testament to my good fortune, I just can't live inside that bubble anymore.

We're a nation run by upright swine and jackals, con men and swindlers who think that civil service is a cause worthy of jockeying. We're a collective of people who think the world is a giant versus sport, that the size of a car and how many you have is some measure of success and God help anyone who has more who paints a target on themselves by having more than you. Discomfort, whether rooted in envy or not, has become grounds for Murder. Unease has become the plague of the unquiet mind, where the man who lives better must be bludgeoned because he highlights all the things that we do not have. It's akin to the insanity of murdering a Michelin star chef because the only things you've ever bothered to learn to cook come from a microwave — and nobody even stops to think this is anything short of normal.

So where did we go wrong? I'd like to think there's a root or a cause because that means that there's some kind of cure. I'd like to think we can carve it out like cancer and flush it with enough poison. Believe me, I've tried. It doesn't work. The problem isn't a physical root, it's not something we can simply deforest with a legion of saws.

Don't get me wrong, my fellow famished, there's a lot of good in the world still out there. There's truth. There's justice. There's passion. I've seen these things. I've touched them. I carry them with me. I've sat down with them around the fire and kept warm with the company of conversation. I've found them at the bottom of coffee cups, even at this hour. I've espoused their virtues from the tops of tall mountains, I've brought people with me to the top and let them go so they could fly. I've seen the beauty in the mud, the wind, and the rain. I've heard symphonies comprised of gunfire and high grade pyrotechnics that would soil the sheets of even the most devout of arsonists. I have seen and known the joy that can only come with knowing you're sharing a twilight sky with all the promise that could ever be. I've known good music, good people, and feasted on amazing meals...

And when I look around now, I'm just as hungry for more as the rest of you.

I want to know the great mysteries. I want to see the future on the other side of the horizon. I want us to go to the stars we know and be more than the petty measurements we all use to gauge success. I want these things the same as I write these words. I chase them down with the same abandon because my bones no other form of motion. It's what's right for me and, despite it being a pursuit most destined to end in feeling rich in spite of poverty, that's the entire point of my life. It's the root of my pleasure, the fuel for my passion, and the roads by which I have found myself stumbling into the what was once thought to be the most impossible of treasures. It's what works for me, the same as, I'd hope, you've found a life that works for you.

It's imperative however that that's as far as it goes, right there. It's for you. That's it. You don't get to make those decisions for anyone else. Freedom, at least according to the founding articles of the American Way, is supposed to be inalienable and truth held self-evident. That means you can't impose your will upon another and call it right, because then that person isn't free. You can't steal what is not yours, however envious you might be of the things you want. You're not entitled to anything just because you're here, breathing and taking up space. Whatever you want out of life, you've got to barter for it with the currency you've cultivated — and I strongly advocate a sense of reflection if money is the only measurement you've learned to use there.

So then it seems to me the fault is more simple than I would like: The problem is us. The problem is that Representational Democracy is all too real. I don't have — nor necessarily think there should be — an alternative. So what then should we do when our national monuments are littered in our own trash? What do we do when the highest court in the land has seen the appointment of soulless, greedy, screw-jacks who couldn't be trusted with a single person, never mind a decision that would impact more of then than we could ever hope to know in a lifetime? What then, do we do, when half the voting public sees no point and the franchise of America is cluttered with the disenfranchised? How do we go forward when even the Captain hates the fucking boat and just wants to slap down the Hammer and Sickle sponsorship stickers on the bow?

Fuck me. I'd never say I know, but I can tell you what I think: We've got to be better than we've found ourselves.

Your life isn't about the size of the T.V. or how many cars you own. It's not about if you buy a home, have a kid, or leave any kind of legacy. These are the fruits that ripen too quickly and rot before the harvest. These goals are cheap. They're easy and they undercut the value of even the most blustery New England sunrise (limited as even I'll admit I find it). Life's about what you do and what you leave behind when you're gone. If all that remains of you is a house full of shit or a snapshot in a history book? You've got no control over what people are going to do with that. None. No more than I do with these words — and believe me I intimately understand the woes that come with that kind of thinking.

Maybe I've got it all wrong. Certainly I wouldn't advocate what I call living for most of the world at large. It has almost killed me more than once and, again, it certainly drives me down a road of poverty and lunacy. That's just it though, it's mine. I'd rather see the iconic moths flying from the mouth of my wallet than have the words of a stranger come spilling from my lips. I'd rather know good food I made and share it than I would buy it to keep it for myself. I like smoking cigarettes and drinking at socially unacceptable hours of the day. I am ill suited to the nine-to-five rat-race — if only because I have no interest in keeping up with the rest of you. I don't even like you. In fact, I find most of you insane if not downright contemptible in your conduct and lacking self knowledge...but there's a catch to those words.

I don't have to agree with you.

I have to stay in my lane. I have to barrel down on the gas pedal. I have to write words to keep myself swimming because that's what sharks do. I have to prepare feasts of plenty and serve them on the fine china of my heart. I have to make my choices for me because I have to live up to my own standards, because I have to respect myself in these cold and bitter mornings, because if I didn't I wouldn't be me and if I wasn't me then who the fuck is living my life? My self is not a commodity and neither is yours. It's not for anyone else to buy and it's not for you to try and sell. It's not for you to say is right and, so long as you're not imposing and demanding your way be the way for anyone else, it's not for anyone else to say is wrong either.

Life is not a spectator sport. It's not an arena where everything has to be a fight or a trench populated only by the men, women, and others who agree with you. It's not a war that must be waged on holidays or your fragile sense of security. It's not an assault on your existence because people don't behave in a manner in which you agree with even if you're worried for the state of their immortal souls. Someone's faith and ideas aren't wrong because they're not the same as yours, the same as I'm not right just because I write these words down. Again, my life has almost killed me. It stalks me through the shadows, it has sent me to bed cold, tired, and hungry, and I accept these choices. Even when I believed I would die alone save the company of a much more literal — and thus more tolerable — breed of dog, I accepted this without hesitation. I had no choice because, again, this life is mine and I had to be me.

It's no different for you or anyone else. Maybe you're the kind of person who likes to get up, cinch up your Windsor knot over the ivory buttons after lacing up your Oxfords, and go to work negotiating land deals on behalf of people who barely speak your language. Maybe you're the kind of soul who struggles through the dawn to put passion into the food you want to feed the world. Maybe you spend your Sunday's in service to your — and I do mean your — God. Maybe you do think the measure of success is how many placeholders you put in front of the decimal point in your bank account. I can worry about you for any one of these things. I can be concerned about the quality of life you're living. I can think you're absolutely insane to go about it the way you do...

But what I can't do is tell you how to live and you can't do that to anyone either. It's repugnant to have to add the caveat that this thinking isn't really relevant to the rapists, pederasts, and other such rabid beasts, who think they've the right to forcibly alter the course of someone's will — but these are the times we live in. Nobody gets a blank check on to bounce on bullshit anymore. Racism never was funny. Mockery of the lives lost won't carry you far at all, if only because you're missing the point of the tragedy and in so doing, you're betraying the same sense of America you claim so proudly under you ball-caps while chomping down on hot dogs and root-root-rooting for your home team thinkers. We're all the same snowflakes, special until we melt because we let ourselves get so hot under the collar at the things we don't agree with in the world.

Again, don't get me wrong. I get it. There's so many people — and I use the word generously here — in the world that go about in ways I vehemently disagree with, but I'll give you room to go about your life, to let you "do you". I'll keep my scathing words lashed firmly behind my teeth unless you invite them in by loosing yours on the world as if you've any kind of real authority over the lives of anyone else. I want you to be happy. I want you to have what you want, but the world is not the oyster for you to shuck and the fishermen who finds the pearl is not yours to murder just because you want it for yourself or don't think he should have it when you're struggling so. I cannot, in good conscience, tell you what is right unless you ask. I cannot, in good standing of the self, advocate the life I've lived unless you knock on the door and ask for that kind of guidance. I cannot, no matter how right I think I am in the way I live — and I very much do — impose that kind of life on you.

Buying into the idea that you're right for anyone other than you? That's chasing your tail trying to make your way. That's perverting your memory, which is the only lasting form of legacy. It doesn't matter how many marks you make in concrete or how much soil you turn up to make way for your own expansion. It's not Dog Eat Dog, it's Caveat Emptor. It's buyer beware, especially of your own shit sandwich. It's making sure you're satisfied with what you see reflected back in the mirror and understanding it's in that glass you'll find the only things you've got any right to have a say in at all.

Again, I'm not saying you can't go mad, get frothing, or get frustrated at the direction the dirt ball seems to be spinning. I'd never do that just like I don't think you can. Feel what you feel, but remember that feelings aren't a license to act. You can absolutely think you're better than others but you don't have any right at all to act on it. You can't tell someone they're wrong for wanting to be something different than what they were yesterday and you can't force someone to love you. Blood comes only from stones that are thrown, and it takes a special kind of asshole to stone someone to death over a matter of disagreeing with how they live when that's not hurting anything but your self righteous sense of how it ought to be going.

So where did we go wrong? As I see it, we all went wrong when we started to think we were the only ones who had it right and then came up with the idea that we had to save the rest of the world by beating them to death until they agreed with us. I think we went wrong when we began to feverishly guard our self-imposed discomforts with stones and spears, when we weaponized ourselves against threats we perceived rather than harmonized against the plights we all know. I think we went wrong when we started thinking we could force anyone who didn't agree with us to get in line just because we didn't like being disagreed with. I think we went wrong thinking we were some moral authority. I think we went wrong thinking there's any right way for anyone but ourselves or that anyone had to come along for our ride who didn't want to be there.

I think we went wrong, trying desperately to be right for everyone. We went wrong trying to think there was a right road for the mass and that we should be forcing everyone else to into our lane instead of just staying in it ourselves. We went wrong trying to impose our way on others instead of giving everyone those inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence in which the very title of said document says all it needs to:

Independence - adj: free from outside control; not depending on another's authority.

 I won't pretend to know what's right for you. I won't ever claim that my truth is yours — especially not when it's so abundantly clear it isn't — but I'll do all any of us can ever really do when we want someone along on the ride of life: I'll ask.

I'll ask you to support and praise those who have gone to places you would like to be rather than strike them in the kneecaps so you can get ahead.  
I'll ask you to believe you're more than the things you own and to start owning yourself instead.
I'll ask you to share your passion with the world, and let others take whatever roads they may.
I'll ask you to stop being right for everyone and instead just try and do right for yourself.
I'll ask you not to try to save the world by way of billy clubs and bullets, but instead by letting people flourish and live lives unfettered by people who think they know better.
I'll ask you to remember that, in taking away the freedoms of another, you're squandering the principles this country was founded upon.
I'll ask you to stop being tyrants, to treat your rabies, and to keep your disagreements behind your teeth unless you see someone trying to take away anyone's freedom.

I'll ask for a bit of sunshine to make its way out from under grey skies. I'll ask for the patience to see the weeks dwindle to days with a smile on my face. I'll ask for a better tomorrow for all of you, because that's what we all deserve, and then I'll work to try and carve that out for me while still leaving room for you  — and I'll stop right there because it's all I can do.

With a humble heart, roaring fire, and wrung hat firmly in hand,
The Writer, an American, trying to make his way through the heartland of the Universe, just like you.

The Importance of Letting a Chapter End

The Importance of Letting a Chapter End:
And why it's so important to keep at least one hand on the wheel.

Here we are again. It's a new year, a time for half-ass resolutions and full measures left squandered in the wake of shame, hangovers, and refuse of promises not intending to be kept. Here we are again, when the skies go grey and stay that way, when the world opens up to something cold and drives good, well meaning, people to a fever pitch of inertia. Here we are again, listening to ourselves tell lies about what we intend to do in the upcoming year, about the changes we're going to make, about the road we're all on, and how it's this year we're finally going to have good things come our way.

 

Well, I hate to break it to you dear Reader, but that's just not the way it works. 

New years aren't new chapters, at least not inherently. Surely they can be, in the same way the blue-thirty dawns can be chalked full of promise and potential, but that's not something that just happens. Chapters end and changes come in exactly the same way: We make choices to pen no more words in the direction things are going. The tone is finished, this piece of what we've been working on has found reason to take a turn to what's next in the story, and now it's time to move on to the ever present 'What's Next'. The catch is, in this moment of realization where the literal (and less so) sun rises over the day of your life, you've got to be the one to put down the period, turn the page, and put the pen back to work.

It's here, in this moment, I encourage a liberal use of punctuation. Apply a question mark to the word 'Next'. Put a period at the end of things that are finished. Let yourself flip the page, let yourself make the changes — this is an absolutely essential piece of "The Good Life" — but be realistic about what those things are. Don't tell yourself a falsehood about your motivations, I don't care if it's only that you're actually going to the gym or if you're going to be kinder to yourself; pick your battles, plot your path, and climb that goddamned mountain. I promise you, the views from the top are worth it — but, in whatever you do, you've got to be honest with yourself or you're just spinning your wheels to go nowhere.

It's okay to find yourself in places you'd rather not be. We've all been there, stumbling down dark alleys, drunk on sinister thoughts that push the jeering villains of our mind firmly into the forefront of our eyes. We've all seen the circling vultures and heard snarling dogs of reality, lurking just out of sight and waiting to pounce on us the minute we set out on the paths unknown. It's what makes well worn, well lit, streets so comforting in foreign cities. It's what makes your ears bend backwards to the footfalls of strangers coming up behind you. It's a survival instinct in some ways — but is survival enough to be called living? Is it enough to simply stick to the paths we know, especially if they're not taking us to the places we want to go?

I caution against this, against letting your back stay turned toward the things that frighten you. I caution against sticking only to what you know, especially when all it's doing is underlining the things in your life you really don't want. I caution against self perpetuation of the undesirable. I caution against only going forward down the paths you know, the roads you can navigate by feel, and I advocate strongly against taking things off road when you find yourself veering through the S-Curves of your own bullshit. That's about as sensible as blaming the whole world for the fact that the same things keep happening to you, that the new year is the same as the old, and thinking that the Universe "just isn't fair."

Once again, my dear Reader, that's just not the way it works.

Life is fair.The Universe is fair. Terrible things happen by happenstance the same as they do by the choice of action — and it's paramount to remember that not choosing is a choice and that, as was Said by Dr. Thompson: "A man who procrastinates in his own choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

Life will go on with or without you. Time will pass, so will people and moments if you let them, and so too will you if you're not carefully keeping an eye on yourself. It's why the importance of self-honesty is so important. It's why keeping your eyes on the road is an essential piece of life advice. It's what you've got to do if you're really going to turn any pages in the story of your life at all. It's why it does you no good to promise yourself that you're going to do things you don't do. It's why you can't expect to get anywhere if all you do is blame life for what happens to you. It's why you've got to be honest with your words, why you should only shake hands if you intend to honor the deal, and why you shouldn't pay so much attention to the way clocks tick — leave that in the background and let it be a happy surprise when you find fifteen hours have passed in a state of blissful merriment.

Life, it's been said, is a highway and you really, really, really, need to keep one hand on the wheel — because not everyone else will. Some people are content, or so they say, to let themselves coast through existence and life like it's just something that happens to them. These are the Mad Max parallels, crazy fast and blinding frenzies of gasoline and flaming engines all too familiar to people who live in Orlando or Detroit. It's the lunatics who populate these roads, the ones who don't understand how the obstacles just jump right out in front of them and leave them a flaming wreck of tears, that deserve the widest berth. This kind of weird is for the ones who can't take it to a professional level and never even had a potential career as a bootlegger in the days of history.

Driving like this just makes you a statistic and, in life, there's little more depressing than just being a number for a bean counter somewhere behind and insurance desk. They don't think about your story, they don't care, and they don't have to anyway. All that, my friends, is up to you.

You're the one who has to let a chapter end, who has to make and allow for change. You're the architect of your own life. You choose where there are walls, windows, and doors. You're the cartographer of your journey. You choose the path, you plot and blaze the trail, and it's up to you to me mindful of the elevation — or lack thereof — you find yourself at. You're the driving force of your own Universe. You're your own sun, wind, and rain. You're your warm days as well as your dark ones and you deserve to be more than the sum total of your own indecision.

So be honest with what you see out there on the road. Pay attention the things you hear. Be mindful of the map you draw and the path your blazing. Pay attention the hardships, see the forest and not just the trees. Enjoy the laughing comfort of a loved one resting on the pillow beside you. Embrace the hard words delivered on the heels of festive holidays. Be more than your mistakes. Be more than your success. Live a life that is full of pride and let others be there to come along if they want — and don't be afraid to leave them behind if they don't. You don't owe anyone, except yourself, anything but you've got to remember that you'll be seen for your offering.

If all that you offer is empty, hollow, words, then how can you expect to find anything more than an empty, hollow, life? If you lie to yourself, if you lie about the momentum you've not got, if you tell yourself the comforts that it just isn't your fault all the time, where do you really expect to go? You're taking your hands off the wheel, you're letting the chapters wind on like cut-rate, dime store, pulp novels destined to die in obscurity. Worse still, the paths will be unknown to you and the best you'll ever manage to be in your own story is a footnote to your own existence — and of all the tragedies in life one can endure, the worst is to be a bystander in all their own days.

So, once again, I encourage you to pay attention. Pay attention to the road and the ride, be mindful of the direction you're letting the whole thing go in, even if it's by not choosing a direction. Be mindful of your passengers and what the people doing in the backseat say about you to the passerby who has nothing to go on by how things look from the outside. Be mindful of the heartfelt tears that you're offered and the pleas for change that come with them. Don't neglect these moments — and certainly not if all you're going to do is play Orphan Oliver and keep asking for more. Be mindful of your feelings and be honest with them, even if you've got to substitute words of thanks that are sometimes forced to be stand-ins until you've got a chance to say the bigger things straight to someone's eye. 

Be mindful of driver-less cars and the frothing dogs behind the wheel of automobiles that are more Bondo and duct tape than steel. Be mindful of the pages you're turning and the direction you're taking your story. Be mindful of lingering too long in Chapters that aren't going anywhere but dragging out the parts of the story. Be mindful of your own bullshit and never opt to eat a whole sandwich's worth of it. Be mindful of who you and how you present that person. Be mindful of where you put the doors in your walls and who you open them for. Be mindful of what you want out of life and what you're doing to get yourself there. Simply put: Be aware and don't be a dick — and apply both of these things in broad strokes when it comes to how you treat yourself.

Remember that, sometimes, to get where you want to be you've got to be willing to let go of things. Own your life instead of your things. Share it with the people who matter most to you and count yourself among the guests at that table. Keep watch on storm clouds in the eyes and, if the rain falls, don't offer a lace umbrella. Don't bullshit with self inflicted platitudes. Don't beg for things you're not willing to appreciate, and let chapters close when the words are done. Slow down and help those who've gotten into an accident, but give no quarter to those who won't account for their own lack of attention. Appreciate the courage it takes to stick out your thumb and ask for a ride. Compliment the roar of a stranger's engine and look into the heart of their words. Find parallel penmanship and blaze wild words weirdly on into the night.

Remember to keep at least one hand on the wheel and the pen. Remember to turn the page. Remember to ring the bell and trim the bonsai when it's time to be done. Remember you don't have to stay somewhere you don't want to be, but you've got to be responsible for the momentum that'll carry you away. Don't get swept away in the waves of the world, steer your ship toward shores you want to call home. Be mindful of who you wound with your accidents and how you hurt yourself by letting choices stand because you're neck deep in your own inertia. Be mindful of how many pages you're filling with words you wouldn't choose and how often you're being taken down roads you'd rather not go down. Be mindful of yourself, from action to sedation, truth to lies, loves, losses, limbs you allow to choke out your trunk.

Remember, you can always close a book and start writing a new one. Remember, you can get off and onto a different road. Remember you can change passengers at any time. Remember to be more than a bystander, that there's more to life than winning the rat-race, and that rodents have few principles beyond survival. Remember the love and loyalty paid to you and pay yourself back to it. Remember who inspires you and be honest with that, the same as you are with what you do with that motivation. Be mindful of who you blame if you're not willing to blame yourself. 

Remember, this life is your and you've got to act according to yourself. You've got to steer the wheel toward places you want to be. You've got to close covers sometimes. You've got to open doors. You've got to look through windows. You, and only you, can make anything happen. Don't expect handouts, but give appreciate when kept from starving in the dark. Remember that people, especially yourself, should not be a placeholder in your existence. Remember to be more than a footnote or a scrawl in the margin. 

Remember to appreciate the view from the top and that, to get there, sometimes you've got to leave things behind — and that it's always better to leave your own bullshit at that bottom of that same goddamn mountain.

Good luck to you, my Readers. May this year be all you want it to be — and may you all gain the wisdom enough to figure out what that is so you can get there.

The Mistake of Counting Grains of Sand

The Mistake of Counting Grains of Sand:

Taking the long road home and the importance of being mindful what you build out wood

Two years of silence, soldiering on through the hardships and the, to borrow a quote from a wiser man than I, "Blizzard of shame" that has become the world in which we share. There are half a dozen drafts and penned pieces that lay scattered on the floor, unfinished attempts to articulate, and pictures left unframed and set in a box. There's been work, mighty work, and words put to paper in other avenues, but I'd recently found myself inspired to sit down and put something to shape here. So, here it is for you, my Dear Readers, my gift to you this holiday season:

Tomorrow is neither a promise nor a guarantee, nor can you barter with the Universe for more sand in the hourglass. You get what you get and that's it. The world is not your home, at least not in totality. You're just passing through. It's important to remember that as you go forward, making your decisions, because they're going to impact your future and become your past. Not looking at that? That's akin to tumbling down the rabbit's asshole — a new phrase that seems far too appropriate — and it's not going to take you anywhere but round and round. Life's a highway, not a carousel. Ride on it all the way to your exit, but be wary of passing by the signs without paying attention.
"What makes a house grand, ain't the roof or the doors. If there's love in a house, It's a palace for sure." Remember that. Remember that the world is your house, and make it your palace, your home. Care for it. Keep it inviting. Make it a place full of love and you'll never find it empty, especially if it's love you've taught yourself to define and then you've gone on to share it with every person who you've opened the door to let in.
Be wary of solicitors and charlatans when they come knocking, the same as people who are strangers to themselves and their hearts. That kind of ignorance leads to a lot of "accidents". People who don't know who they are can't be trusted and people who're just trying to sell you something aren't interested in your value, just what you can do for them.
Don't define your days by your things. Who you are isn't your car, your stereo, or your house. Who you are is how you drive, the music that moves you, and the way you treat the places you hang your hat. Statues aren't legacy. How you'll be remembered however very much is and the only control you have over that is how you act. Be mindful of what you're leaving behind in the world and the footprints people might one day misinterpret. Be clear. Be honest, especially with yourself, and don't bother handing out platitudes. You're the architect of the future and the mason who will lay the bricks that become the past. People might get the wrong idea about what you've built but, the harder you try to be up front about that? The less chances you have to be remembered as crooked.
Be aware that everything in your life is temporary, every last thing. Nobody gets out of here alive and the best thing you can really hope to do is leave the world a better place than you found it. That, however, takes real and honest work. It takes a sense of self awareness that leaves you more than just a whirlwind of ego. Remember it goes hand in hand with your id and you've got to cultivate and work on both if you want to do more than just walk in circles.

The world can, and will be, a hard place at times — but not always. You can let it be easy, but you've got to remember that the only things you're ever going to get out of it are the things you work toward. Again, this is why you should work on yourself. Make sure you get yourself, in just about every sense of the word. Make sure you understand who you are and what you want. Make sure you understand why you want the things you want and work toward them. Put in the time and let being who you are be its own reward. I promise you, it's the most valuable gift you'll ever give — and it sets the maximum value on everything you'll ever give everyone.

Don't spend your life with the currency being ticking clocks and dripping sands. Don't watch the hourglass. If you really want to watch time go by, do it with the promises inherent in every sunrise. Share them with the people who matter most to you. Sit down and get real with what the coming day represents, in all its potential, because today's really all you've got. Tomorrow's a guess and yesterday's a brick you've already put in place. Build off the latter and in the direction of the former and you'll find yourself carried to all the high places you could ever want to go.

Happiness is not an accident or something that just happens to you. You've got to hunt for it and, if you don't put the time into yourself to figure out the shape that takes, you never will. It'll forever be the snow leopard, hiding a the top of the mountain. It'll elude you and you won't even be a meal it wants to pounce on in surprise. Be a feast for Happiness. Give it things to nurture it and encourage it to come inside. If you can't do that, your palace is just a thing made of wood and, again, you've got to be really careful with that because then people are going to remember it in ways you might not like.

You are the only answer you can give yourself that has any chance of being right. In order to find it though, you've got to ask the questions and look at the roads you're laying down. These things are the maps of who you are and they're the only way you're going to find your way home. The soul doesn't have a GPS, you've got to look up at the stars and find your own bearings. If you're not mindful of the roads you've taken, of the twists and turns you've accepted and will accept, you've got no hope to be anything but lost. Don't get lost on your way home and, worse still, don't forget that you can always build another one if needed.

When you've got it, or get there, put the hourglass in the closet. Don't count grains of sand or you'll miss the beauty of beaches. Embrace the waves, let yourself float, and build yourself somewhere soft to lay your head. Don't fill that space with 'Could have' or 'Should have' moments. Speak, and speak honestly. Live, laugh, and love. Be afraid, but don't let that be the tool that shapes your stone. Use it as motivation to be real because that's the only hope you've got to get anywhere.

Don't fill your bed with bad memories. Don't keep them in a shoe box or tuck them between the mattress. Don't leave them as minefields for your loved ones to find when they're digging through the memories of your home. Remember not a day will go by when you don't take yourself to bed and anyone you share that space with ought to be someone you love. It doesn't matter if it's your person — which is to say you —, your partner, or your pet, Your place of rest is where you start and stop all the spaces between life and death. My hope for everyone is that you find a way to share with everyone who touches it in a way that makes you smile in your sleep and excited to start your day with whoever it is. It's arguably one of the best feelings in the world.

Again, to borrow someone else's words: Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be. Don't lie about who you are, to yourself or anyone. The truth might find its way to the light, but not before the world's already condemned your castle for being full of monsters and torn it to the ground. Worse still, you might still be alive at the time and forced right back to the proverbial woods that turn us all into babes, crying and screaming with no idea where to go and nothing to do but set up some temporary camp and pray we survive the night.

In that same vein, don't be dependent on others for your happiness. If you are, you're just giving them the control to take it away. Give it yourself first and then share it when you find someone who you want to share it with. Don't give people the right to snuff out your fire, but instead bring your candle close enough to theirs that both your flames can grow. Be independent in your feelings and honest about what they are. State clearly what you want and put sand to the best use there is for it: Drawing lines you're not going to allow to be crossed.

Be flexible and you'll break less. Don't sweat things you can already imagine a day you barely remember them, but don't hesitant to plant your feet alongside the river of your truth. This is where your roots are going to grow and you should be aware of the soil you've picked for yourself.

Keep track of where the potholes are in the road so, when you're on your way back back home, you're not hitting them again. Remember to keep one hand on the wheel always and two when the traffic gets heavy. Feather the gas to keep going forward and don't try to slam on the brakes every time the panic sets in. If you do that, the journey to being who you are is only going to be surrounded by safety and the highway's never safe — thus you're lying about the trip and short-selling the experience. Please don't do that, the same as I'd ask you please not to drive forward with your eyes glued to the rear view mirror.

You deserve to do more than just survive, to pray that you can get through the day, and you should be exceptionally wary of banking on prayers without any action to follow. Break your bread and share it with the world. Feed and nurture everything in it, including yourself. Find music that makes you dance, smiles you don't want to know a day without, and remind yourself what those things every time you see the sun hang low in the sky. Life's a mystery, but the places you find your value and your happy don't have to be.

You deserve to have the life you want, whatever shape that takes for you, and so does everyone else. Don't try to take that from anyone. Don't storm someone else's palace with a battering ram. Instead, fill your plate with something nourishing, walk on over, and knock on the door. If what you've got, if who you are is wanted in on the other side? You'll be invited and, again, that's one of the best gifts you'll ever be given.

Be someone who's wanted in a palace, especially your own. Be someone who's got love to give themselves and then to share. Be the warm fireplace for yourself before you try and share it with a weary traveler you met on the road. Be the soft music and the scent of fresh bread and a hot meal, and test your food before you let it go out of the kitchen. Be the blanket of warmth and try to patch the holes where the cold might get in. Be the laughter that'll infect the world, the smiles that'll invite it in, and the meal that'll nurture it.

Go home. Be in your palace and not your shelter made of wood. Enjoy the waves as they roll in on your shore. Be your own lighthouse to guide you back to where you want to be, and keep the lights on for the people in which you've placed value. Be present in your relationships, especially the one with yourself, and share the things that will see the bricks set where you want them to be. Give yourself the love you hope to find before you look for it anywhere else. Make your house, temporary as it may be, a home you never forget how to get back to and make sure to share your hearth often with the people who's flames come together with yourself. Sit around the tree that you are and let yourself grow roots right through the floor, decorate it with the light of your heart and the shiny bits of your value. Be your own Christmas star, be proud of who you are.

Be a gift to yourself. After all, it's Christmas and your presence is the best present.

Words of Advice to the Up and Coming Generation

Words of Advice to the Up and Coming Generation:

A Top-Whatever list of warnings and suggestions on spending your time

Here it is, your life is passing right in front of you. Right now, it's happening. I'm serious. While you're sitting there on the cusp of a new chapter in your life, you're not thinking about that, but maybe you should be. You and I? We're part of the Up and Coming Generation. We're the ones who're changing our ways, picking new paths. We're the ones getting rattled by grand raconteur that lives in the back of our minds. We're painting green grass on the other side of fences we're just itching to climb. We know this because we woke up. We know this because, today, we took a breath. We put one leg in front of the other and got about our time in some way or another.

While you've been out, gallivanting one would hope, that's life. While you do everything you do, you're defining your life. It happens no matter what you do, but also because of what you do. Everything from the thoughts you think, to the actions you take, and the hours you sleep will impact your life. It's time you can't get back -- and it's important to remember that time is fleeting and likely shorter than you'd like. With that, we come to our first point:

1.  There are only two things you, as a human, can ever really give to anyone. What are these two things? You're time and your word. Ultimately, that's what every interaction you have with someone will ultimately boil down to at its base. You are giving your time to their company, and you're showing up for it honestly. If you abuse either of these points, or don't bring them to the table, you're not doing yourself any favors. That kind of interaction isn't going to help you either. Find somewhere more fulfilling to invest yourself. That kind of behavior is only well suited if you frequent your locker for your text books -- and even then it's pretty suspect when it comes to matters of substance.
   
   Furthermore, these things are your currency in the world. There are how the rest of the world gains a measurement of how much they can expect if they chose to give you the same. If you've built yourself a reputation as being rather a bit of gimcrack (that's a cheap, but pretty, knockoff. For the curious).
   
   
   
2.  You are the center point for every area of your life. That's it. Without you, things that happen in your life would not happen. It's that straight forward. Everything, from the good times to the bad, is your fault. You put yourself in some position where an event happened. It's why the sentiment of "Everything happens for a reason" is only applicable when the subsequent addition you can find printed all over the internet is attached at the end."And that reason is you".
   
   Take credit for your good deeds and great moments. Be accountable for where, and when, you fuck up. Pay your debts to both, because you owe them. Don't try and shake it off or pass the buck. You did what you did. Own it,
   
   I'm disappointed I feel the need to add this qualifier. I feel it should be abundantly clear I am not in the habit of victim shaming but, rather than adding it after the fact, I want to go ahead and be real up front with you.
   
   This is not to say you're responsible for the wickedness of others either, so you can hold that argument. That's what they are, or should be, responsible for here. Maybe you made some mistakes in how you handled them, maybe you missed some warning signs, or maybe you had absolutely no clue them villain in your vignette was going to turn out to be the villain at all. Nobody is blaming you for that. Some people are just monsters and, in that respect, it is our job to make sure they know that so (at least we can hope) they might change their subhuman behavior in the future.
   
   
   
3. Just because someone has not shared in your plights does not mean they have no right to add their voice to an understanding that is wrong.  Empathy is one of those things that's a double edged sword to a lot of people, especially in a world where you can be accused of being an insensitive (or worse) person because you did not conduct yourself in a manner that the sub-divided masses think you should have. No human being on the face of this planet will understand what it is like to be you. Not one person will think what you think or feel what you feel because there is no way that is impossible without them being inside your head.
   
   It doesn't matter if you've got shared cultural backgrounds or experiences. It doesn't matter if the antagonist behind what's happened to you is the same person. You can find common ground there, because unfortunately life gave you the bricks to build bridges over the same river, but how you build it is entirely yours.
   
   
   
4. Don't mistake a pattern of harshly judging yourself as your dedication to self improvement. It's really okay to not be exactly where you want to be. I know, in a world that says "to be a success you must accomplish X", it's easy to forget that. I know that you can look in the mirror and know each and everyone one of your shortcomings and things that are "wrong" with you. I know you can sit in a quiet room and feel like you're wasting your time. I know that you can tell yourself that you're not where you want to be and that, because of this, you are failing yourself.
   
   You're not. I know it can feel like it, I know you can make the argument that you haven't done enough, but not everything needs to be done in a day. You're a growing person, someone who is impacted daily by the events of a life that sometimes feels like it's beyond your control. You're subjected to things where you've got to react, you're going to hit setbacks and things are going to happen that seem to undo the years of hard work you've put in to making you, well, you.
   
   This does not mean you've failed, only that you're once again being tested. If you find things aren't up to the bar, take a good look at what misses. Decide if you want to put in the work to get it back or if, maybe, you've changed to the point you're ready to let it go. So long as you're living, it's never too late to go back for a piece of yourself you left by the side of the road -- just make sure you're not pulling a U-turn to go back and pick up your own bullshit.
   
   
   
5. Don't lock your heart up in a box and hope for someone to come along who has the key. Seriously. Don't. Spend time with your heart, have a conversation with it, and get to know it intimately. Love it like you want it to be loved. Get to know where it's weak, where it's strong, where you want it to be harder, and where it needs to be softer. Understand the language it speaks and the language it needs to hear. Learn how to communicate that, learn to teach that language to others.
   
   And then wear it where the whole world can see it.
   
   A life spent hiding your love away and then hoping someone has the tenacity to come digging for it is a recipe for hard times. Nobody should need to be an emotional archaeologist, digging through the layers of your past and tunneling under walls, just to be able to love you. Nobody should have to wander through traps and try and bribe the locals just to get to love you. Nobody has to know how to solve the puzzle of you, because you are not a puzzle. You're a glorious and complex human being who has got the right to be loved. If you're finding you can't find it, maybe it's because you're setting obstacle courses that people don't want to run through.
   
   Try instead of taking your heart outside of your head. Try to let it roan free from the tower you build to protect it. I promise you, it's more resilient than you think it is and, so long as you're not holding onto pieces of it, it'll come back together.
   
   
   
6. No matter what you might think, at any given point in time, you are not alone. Honestly, you're not. You live in a world with billions of other people. You live in a world where, even if someone doesn't know what it's like to walk a mile in your shoes, they've got similar footwear somewhere in their closet. Maybe they can't precisely say they know your pain -- and they shouldn't -- but that doesn't mean they can't understand it. More than that, you don't need to understand someone to be there for them.
   
   Almost everyone on this planet will encounter something in life that's too heavy to carry on their own. It can be difficult for us to admit it, it can feel like we're unfairly sharing a burden and asking for help when everyone's got it rough, but if there's one thing I can say for certain about that behavior? It's arrogant. If there's two things about it? It's selfish.
   
   You have no way of knowing what anyone can, will, or wants to handle. If you're telling yourself it's too much for them, or it's not fair of you to share it with them, that's taking agency with someone else's feelings and you're being a prick to everyone involved. Stop it. I know it's hard, I know you don't want to feel like you're some whiny child asking for help, but let other people reject your request if they want to -- and then ask someone else if they do.
   
   There's nothing wrong with saying you need help but, I promise you, there will be a whole lot more that goes wrong if you try and handle it all yourself.
   
   
   
7.  Take at least a regular sojourn outside your comfort zone. Trying new things is one of the easiest ways to find new sources of joy in life, it really is, and this is especially essential if you find your "tried and true" methods of handling life are starting to fail you.  Even if they haven't, do it anyway. That's it.
   
   
   
8.  Being vulnerable to being hurt is essential to being loved. I know this one sucks, but it's true. Be vulnerable, do it. Don't think of it as being brave. Don't think of it as being courageous. It might be all of those things, but I strongly advise that you don't make it about those things. Make it about confronting your fears of being hurt. Make it about trusting your own worth enough to be surprised when the world sees it too. Show it to them so they have that opportunity. If you don't open yourself up to it, the space your using to let people in won't be a big enough door for them to actually get through.
   
   I'm not saying knock down the castle all in one day.
   
   
9. Learn to feed yourself. I mean this in every way I can think of at the moment. Learn to cook the food that you like, learn to share it with people who bring more to your table than just sides. Learn to let the people in who nurture you. Read books that feed your soul, watch films that feed new ideas, and subject yourself strange cuisine solely for the sake of knowing where your tastes really end up.
   
   Starvation of the self, either because you've chosen not to feed your soul or because you've given all your food away, is a surefire way to stagnate. On the other hand, nurturing yourself to be who you want to be is the most surefire way to make sure you end up there. Feed yourself the love you want to feel and watch how you grow. Don't rely on the spoon of a stranger to bring you the nourishment you need, learn to cultivate it and share it. Be twice as wary if you find yourself needing airplane noises to get the good things down the hatch.
   
   Don't be afraid to break bread, but understand the difference between the people you invite to your feast and the people you ask to sit at your table. Be discerning and keep extra chairs handy for when the surprise guest shows up and you discover they're sitting someplace other than where you'd rather have them be. Invite them to join you. See what happens.
   
   
10. It's okay -- if you let it be. Whatever it is, I promise you, it's okay. It doesn't matter what you're feeling or facing, what you're handling or holding inside. It doesn't matter if you're taking deep breaths or if you feel like you're drowning, if you're angry at yourself or afraid of what happens when you open the blinds and let the world see in. These are the trials and adversities of life. To reiterate: You don't have to handle them on your own. You're not less of a worthwhile person just because of it. You're not anything but someone who's trying to make it, and that's okay.
    
    I know it's hard to convince yourself of that, that you're not somehow less than because of whatever reason you've decided justifies that conclusion. I'm here to tell you that you're not. It doesn't matter if your health is failing you. It doesn't matter if your heart is failing you, your head is being a dick, or your soul is starving and ravenous. You are okay. You're human. These things happen. I'm repeating it to drive the nail home because it's probably one of the most important pieces of advice I have to give you.
    
    
11.  A disagreement with your perspective is not always criticism. Another one I can't stress enough is this one. Not everyone will agree with you -- which is good, because that would be boring -- but just because someone doesn't think like you do does not mean that one of you is wrong. Most of like, like every single piece of advice presented here, is a reaction to previous experience and an expression of the thoughts those responses have brought to us. For the thousandth time, not everyone will know exactly what you've been through. It's just not possible and, with that notion in mind, it's important to remember that will lead people to very different conclusions about the world than you have for yourself.
    
    Now, you can absolutely criticize someone for disagreeing with you. They can do it to you too. Maybe this is a fundamental point about your personalities that is different. Maybe it's something you feel you need to defend because you're so against the position on the other end. Whatever the chosen reason, it's important to remember that this kind of thing is built upon the same foundation as the idea in question. You're choosing to take a position of offense because someone thinks differently than you.
    
    It's especially important to apply this to conversations with yourself. Let yourself be able to change your mind -- because it's entirely possible you might not have one if you can't.
    
    
12. Don't forget to let yourself when you get tired. You decide your own timetable for satisfaction and, just because you want it done right-fucking-now does not mean it's possible. Sorry to break it to you, but not every problem you come across is something you're going to be handle right now; not every door in your history can be opened. You hid some keys for yourself for a reason and it's not always as simple as retracing your steps. Sometimes you've got to fashion a new key, sometimes you've got to teach yourself how to be a locksmith.
    
    Whatever you need to do, you won't always be able to handle it all at once. Again, this is okay. It will wear you down. It will wipe you out. It will make you want to put your head down on a pillow and sleep for days. It'll take everything you've got to wrap your hands around the brass handles on that door sometimes. Just remember that endurance isn't always about how far you can go, but how well you can pace yourself to work with what you've got to give.
    
    
13. Learn to need yourself in your own life. Learn to be okay with being selfish, with coming first. Understand that you are essential to your own existence. That's it.
    
    
14. Go. Go where? Exactly. Ask that question. Ask yourself where you want to go and then go. Go on adventures. Go to the company that makes you feel like you're at home. Go to yourself. Go to places you enjoy. Go places you've never been. Go deep into your own soul and go into others. Go outside of yourself. Go find who you are. Go challenge yourself. Go love yourself. Go want. Go dream. Go create. Go be "better". Go live. Go laugh. Go fall in love. Go find an answer to a question. Go be brave.
    
    Go be afraid, and then keep going. Go being hurt, and then go find yourself a space to heal. Go meet yourself at a new crossroad. Go be yourself in a room full of strangers and go where you find it accepted. Go read. Go grow. Go create your own personal masterpiece. Go be your raison d'etre. Go climb that goddamned mountain. Go spread the light and love you've got all over the world. Let go of what people do with it.
    
    Go be a beautiful disaster. Go be your own magnum opus. Go out unto the world and let it do what it will. Go meet the person you're going to be tomorrow and go right ahead and fall in love with them. Go out there and find a reason to bed at night with a smile on your face. Go. Get out there. Get in there. Go to yourself. Go home. Go out.  Go dance, go cry, go be broken and go put yourself back together. Go bring someone some glue who has got less than you. Go do, go be, go big, go all the way.
    
    Go meet yourself. Go meet strangers -- actually meet them -- and go learn about them. Go see a life that isn't yours -- even if it's just the one you've been letting yourself live for awhile.
    
    Just. Go.

Another Page of Something Different:

Another Page of Something Different:

So, every once and awhile, I like to step away from the usual contents of this blog and post something a little more personal. I think, with as much as I've been addressing the general issue with vulnerability, with an unwillingness to bring soul to conversation, this is all the more appropriate. So, without further delay and plenty of adieu, here you are. Don't say you haven't been warned.

____________________________

Where the fuck I was seemed entirely irrelevant. Much like most products of my time, I'd never had a taste for honest work. Unlike many of the math equations trying to pass off as people, I wasn't content for simply being. It was how I'd come to get lost in streets I probably should have recognized. It was entirely on purpose, a representation of who I was, even if I was too out of my mind to admit it. You see, that was the real problem. I was in love with being lost, with the notion of being gone, and, as I hobbled down cobbled streets I, I had no real choice but to admit this to myself in some kind of blind panic.

I tried to warn people of my blunders, to not get so hung up on love they went chasing it down every rabbit hole known to man, but it was clear it was a lost cause. I could shake all the lapels I wanted, wrap my arms around any calves that passed me at eye level, and it wouldn't have mattered. I was a stranger smack dab in the middle of Generation Stranger Danger. I was completely naked to these people and running around like some, slack jawed, completely intelligible, aquatic creature. To them, I was trying to move my vocal chords like they'd spent a lifetime underwater. To them, I was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen.

This wasn't terribly inaccurate mind you. As I said, I was someone who identified with being lost. This is not the kind of philosophy most people can attach themselves too, even in the most addled of states. This is a world where the very concept of emotion had been replaced by comfort. This was a world where the idea of adventure had been perverted into safe little jaunts barely outside the circumference of known restaurants. This was a world where everyone was a boogeyman, where everyone was expected to wear armor, and the only safe way to exist was inside of what you knew.

I didn't fit in this world and I knew it.

It was how I'd come to be here, face down on the sidewalk and rather enjoying the view. It was a subjective vantage that made things make sense. I saw the world in strange angles. I spent a considerable portion of myself trying to right this with drugs and alcohol, only to realize I was trying to bail out a sinking ship with a shot glass. I'd come to know this about myself and, just as importantly, I'd come to stop caring about it. I was, as they say, comfortably fucked.

It felt all the more appropriate, even as I was surrounded by blurred reflections obscured by the glass etchings of buildings desperate to be noticed.  I was, or so it seemed to me, in a place that most people worked very hard to be in their lives. I was uncomfortable but placated just enough by the trinkets and baubles I was willing to accept. I was going through the motions of a life I wasn't living. The only difference, near as I could tell, was that I was actually happy with it -- and I think that should have been the first sign that there was a real problem.

Now, however, was not the time to address such things. Now was the time to raise brown paper bags to tired lips. Now was the time to wander dark alleys and bumble out into the neon trying so desperately to convince you this tired town had some kind of life. Now was the hour when you heard muffled bastardizations of Journey and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now was the time when you knew, if you didn't make it into a bar quickly, there was going to be an issue between you and the bartender over whether or not you'd made it to last call or not. Now was the time when you knew, even with the traveler of Wild Turkey in your hand, you were really going to need another drink.

It's always been my favorite hour of the evening, even if only because it was chalked so full of disingenuous courage. It's the hour where everyone loves everyone or everyone fights everyone. It's Extreme O'Clock, the place where emotions run raw and ragged. It's the time of day when everyone revisits the dog eared pages of their own history, where everyone chooses to embrace or run from it. It's the time of night where the only people left are the ones so mad drunk on wanting that there's nowhere left to go but up to eleven. It's the one time of day where I make any kind of sense when I look at my environment.

It's how I go home.

Even the smoke filled room, with some neglected canine bellowing out a cover of Baba O'Riley from somewhere deep within doesn't shake the feeling. I know, no sooner than I see the spastic shakes of someone trying to find rhythm after one too many Appletinis, that I have found my place. I know, even as I snake my way through the slathering masses of excited and desperate hands, even as I'm forced to kick away the refuse with a bad leg that groans about the impending winter, I have found my place. Its oscillation matches my own and, at least for right now, it's somewhere I can probably find myself a drink.

"You can't bring that in here." No sooner had I hit the bar than the gruff and tumble voice of someone hit by times too hard to afford decent cigarettes punched my ears. I looked up to see that my brown of sacred sanity was not going to be accepted here. His eyes said it all. There was no point in fighting it and clearly there was going to be trouble. Even so drunk it was hard to see, I could work the math. I knew, that if I didn't act quickly, any chance I had of getting myself something sanitary was going to drop to zero.

"What if I leave it behind the bar with you?" I still sounded like a fish but, with the sound of the music, it seemed like it was hard to tell. There was a brief pause where it seemed my logic had struck a nerve and, I knew, I had to jump on it. "It's not like you can afford to turn me away." I added quickly. "I'm the kind of customer who keeps small towns like this floating."

There was a dry chuckle, almost like the emotional side of his beard covered chords hadn't been used since prohibition. "That a fact? How's that?"

"You ever seen a drunk who didn't have to piss every five minutes?"

The laugh that followed was as alien as I was in this room. Nobody heard it, nobody saw it, largely because nobody wanted to -- and because I was still nobody at that moment. He didn't say anything as the wounded dog got off the stage and was promptly replaced with some large bird that hard clearly done too much methamphetamine. Even though I couldn't see her through the buzzing lights that wanted to convince you this bar was something you saw in a movie once, I was certain her teeth weren't the only thing rotten about her.

"You better hurry up and make up your mind. Nobody can be expected to survive this kind of thing sober." I tried to grease the chute that would land me somewhere higher and lower simultaneously.

"You're not sober." He fired back with a knowing look. He'd clearly been at this for awhile, which should have been evident by the tattoos on his arm that looked like someone had spilled a glass of grape juice on a fresh watercolor painting.

"I'm too sober for this." I countered with the very last chip I had to play. "Now, if you're not going to serve me, you're going to have to let me know man. I've got things to outrun and I can't reasonably be expected to do with what I have here. So, you can either take my bottle and serve me a triple gin on the rocks, or I can go somewhere else."

There was a small moment of trumpeting from my insides when he took my paper bag and sat it behind the bar and started pouring my drink plus change. Two pint glasses, half full of ice, and poured generously with the clear liquid of my salvation. He sat them in front of  me with barely a word until he'd taken my money and helped himself to the change.

"What're you trying to outrun anyway?" He asked me flatly, the song dying down somewhere in the background, probably because the caterwauling woman was too drunk to see the prompter.

"Myself." I answered honestly, slugging down the first glass without a shred of hesitation.

"And how's that working out for you?"

"Just fine." I swallowed the second glass, shaking my head as the alcohol and juniper punched me square in the back of the throat. I was going to be sick in the morning. That was just fine, it wasn't any different than how I felt if I'd been drinking or not. I'd barely make it to the bathroom sober before I'd have to catch my reflection in the vanity mirror. There was enough there to make me sick and that said nothing of what happened as soon as I look up the window. "Why're you asking?"

"Never seen anybody manage it before and you look like you're trying pretty hard." He made  a face when I waved for my paper bag, but I gave him a nod for the door as I awkwardly stumbled onto the plywood of the floor from the comfort of my bar stool. He seemed to understand I was leaving and handed it to me. I probably should have left then and there, but the honest nature of a moment of clarity isn't the kind of thing you can ignore.

"I manage it all the time." I fired with a smirk, the good hand snatching the bar like it was the last cheeseburger on the planet.

"Oh yeah?" The question was smug, like he'd finally managed to decipher the full dictionary of my drunken language -- or my pantomimes were getting better -- but he was was still sure he'd heard it before. "How's that?"

I pulled the bottle back to my lips for an equally smug haul, despite his earlier, non-verbal, warnings.

"You've just got to talk yourself into the fact that forgetting who you are is a good idea and agree that you're not going to remember until you wake up."

"And how's that feel?" He asked with a smug grin and a wave of beefy hand toward the open door.

"About like a hangover." And, with that, like always happened, I was back out into the night. I was revisiting those dog eared pages of myself with an inability to read the words on the page. I was stumbling down streets I might have been on hundreds of years ago.  I was right where I needed to be and, by the end of the night I was staring up at the sky by the edge of a river.

I was drunk on strange feelings in a strange place. Tomorrow was going to hurt and I'd need to replenish much of what I'd lost. It was going to be like every other tomorrow, whether I'd been drunk the night before. I could take comfort in that, I could let it be the most human thing I'd ever been, and, like it or not, I was ready to wake up screaming. It was the same way I'd come into the world and, in very different way, those two days would have something in common.

I'd be ready to fall in love with the world all over again.