2004-05-10 - 4:31 p.m.

Hey how about some normal voice for a while?

Had another lost weekend…okay lost LONG weekend. I’m sure everyone knows about it so we can dispense with the details. (And for the record, since when did my personal life become a matter of public record? I don’t necessarily mind, it’s just weird to realize that I’m not as anonymous as I thought.)

So yeah, last episode of Friends….

What?

You want to know the filthy details? Whoremongers.

Okay, okay. I did want to talk about something that happened over my vacation. I spent 4 nights visiting The Girl (yes, I’m sure you all know who she is but please allow me the illusion that my life has some privacy and mystery) and in addition to the Olympic levels of debauchery I got some introspection. Speaking to (in one of the few non lecherous moments of my trip) to a wise, if esoteric, shaman, I realized that I need to make a change. (Tangentially, The Girl has a sign in her room that pretty much says something about the beauty of the ability to change one’s life. This hit me on a very profound level. The fact that it was on a picture of Angelina Jolie hit me on a more visceral level. What? How do I know what’s in The Girl’s room? Shut up, that’s how.)

Point the First: I realize that my life is crap. Okay so maybe not Rwanda war zone level crap, but still, I live in a soul crushingly banal city and my life revolves about my job (which is quickly becoming jus that), my grad school (which is the MTA Trucking School of Higher Learning) and my family (which is driving me crazy). I’ve been a pretty bad place for the last couple of years, pretty bad as in I lost sight of the person I became at NC, someone who I was just getting used to and reverted to the joyless fucker I used to be.

Crap being established, this brings me to point Two: I’ve been too scared to change. I fell into this trap that I thought I had security and I do, I just realized that with that security comes the death of my ability to move. I settled too quickly, claiming that my responsibilities have to come first. I’ve been too cautious, too conservative to take the big chances. I need to change that. I need to make the jump. I need to do this. I don’t know if it’s because I need to prove to myself that I can make these changes or because I’m living the wrong kind of life for the kind of person I’ve become. But I need to do this because its killing me. You know, at the edge of my vision, just out of conscious thought, I’ve been thinking about death. Not death as in “I’m going into the bathroom and slitting my own wrist longwise with a razor blade.” But death as in “My life and all the joy in it is dead and all I have left is a long gray afternoon of existing, not living.”

Which brings me to point Three: The Girl. Ah, I know what you’re thinking. The porn. Now you’re thinking “Actionhero’s going to relate this all to how he and The Girl did [block delete]” Of course not. But it does occur to me that a lot of what I find so attractive about The Girl (not that these are the only things or even the best things) is that she represents something new about my life. She represents a change, a chance, a risk, proof that I don’t have to be stuck in the same place or situation that, ultimately, I put myself in. Even if I died tomorrow, or I ended up being transported to Mars, or in some way never saw her again, then it was all worth it because she gave me a kick in the head (so to speak) that I needed.

So what exactly are the changes I’m going to make? I’m working on that. I’ve been rethinking Law School and I am going to retake the LSATs if for no other reason than to see what happens if I actually try to do well. And I should revisit the grad. school idea or something. I need to get back to my life on my own terms. Because Death is standing right next to me now and she’s reminding me that all I get is a lifetime and I need to stop being a fuck up.

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