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The Digression Tango
There are a few mistakes that I’m
making by writing this horribly sentimental, time consuming tripe, the primary
being that I’m writing this for the blog that I retired. The second is that, at
the time of writing, being 2:00 a.m, I have entered into a punch-drunk type
mood and method where every idea seems to make me grin like an idiot. Finally,
the third is that I work under the assumption that people still like to know
the inner machinations or emotions or motives or ticks of my brain,
personality, psyche, what have you.
Barring all three mistakes, here
we go:
Actually, a fourth might be
passive voice but I have no idea how that would factor into writing a personal
(not really personal, others are meant to read it, comment on it, etc) essay of
some kind.
So, today I turned 20. Today I am
turning 20. I don’t know if it’s a continual thing (this year has been building
up to me turning 20, rather than one day, or is 20 just a build up to 21 and 21
until death?) or if it’s just one day, BAM! You’re 20. BAM! I’m 20 and will
continue to be for about a year, give or take.
My current position in life isn’t
terrible. I live in a house that I consider to be dysfunctional, but my rating
scale really works off of the approval of others, so others consider it to be
dysfunctional as well. It’s kind of like the IMDb user rating system. Critics
say, I have a kind of dysfunctional house, but I digress.
I have a well paying job. People
make careers out of what I do now, and I get paid much less than the market standard.
I’m currently single, but that
hasn’t bothered me really for a while until the Average User begins to rate how
lonely they think I am, and then it kind of gets a little bit annoying.
I write. Not professionally,
although this past week I was picked up by a game review site. We’ll see how
that works out.
I weigh more than I should. My
BMI is high, but my blood pressure is baseline. My heart rate is typically in
the 50-60 range, but I can’t really run very far. I’d be useless in a war unless
it was with people who were by and large larger than I am, unless they were
better with a gun.
I have lost about 10 pounds, but
I digress.
Digressing. I’m doing that a lot.
So, anyway, I guess the
roundabout point I’m trying to make is that I consider myself to be almost completely
average in every way, if you take the curve off of my wit and my blood lust.
Have circumstances made me the
way I am? Would things be different?
Well, I’m going to take a look at
different ways things could have turned out.
I think. Since they didn’t turn
out that way, I don’t think I’ll ever really know.
Let’s take it back to the 5th
grade. I invited 9 people to my birthday party. For a 5th grader,
that was a lot, but I had a lot of friends. Sent out invitations, got a bunch
of RSVPs, everything. So imagine my shock when one person showed up for my
birthday dinner. Two tables, pushed together, my parents sitting away from
everyone so it would be like I was my own person, and one person showed up.
If more people showed up, I think
I would have had a much more lax attitude towards drugs and alcohol. If I had
found a huge amount of friends in the fifth grade, I probably would have
maintained a pretty straightforward outlook through middle school and into high
school, especially given the divorce of my parents. I would have no doubt
gotten into a sport of some kind, and would probably be in college.
But one kid showed up. I shied
away from everyone and started looking through a very scrutinizing eye towards
the world. I turned into a cynic at a young age. Given that, I’ve maintained
only one or two close friends at
time, preferring one best friend over four or five.
In middle school, I played an
ass-ton of video games. Ass-ton is a metric term denoting an amount that is far
greater than healthy. Didn’t get into physical activity, didn’t even get into
girls. I also began, I think, around this time, to lie to myself. I would go
back in my head and alter stories so that they would have better endings. I’ve
muddled my past this way. I don’t know how things really went anymore,
everything has kind of melded together. It doesn’t help that I question my
memory regularly because things I thought I knew turned out to be not true.
I’d go into examples, but I can’t
remember them at this point. It’s late and that’s ironic. It’s not ironic that
it is late, moreover I can’t remember the un-truths.
Sidetracked.
So, in middle school, I had one
steady and constant friend. Steadfast, no matter the weather, every weekend at
their house kind of deal. Pretty close friend. I didn’t really feel the need to
really make another friend or try and focus my concentration on anyone else,
because that was it.
Enter high school, friend
discovers that he can be cool, leaves me in the dust.
He sells drugs now.
Not a cautionary tale. Not a, “Well,
that’s what you get,” thing, that’s just the way life is.
I probably could have followed
him into the throes of popularity, but I was always one to swim against the
tide. Why make things easy when I can put myself through a self imposed self
hell that would really be a self improvement course?
So, I always had the tendency to
pick and favor one friend over every other. Goes back to the fifth grade thing,
I guess.
In high school, I didn’t do much.
I could have put my nose to the grindstone and gone to a great college, but I
didn’t (and still don’t) know what I want to get out of life. Instead, my
parents started going through a divorce, my mind started to drift. At the age
of 14, I started to work.
Here comes another one: An
aversion to work. Had I postponed getting a first job at such a young age, I
probably would not have the same disdain I have now towards having to work for
money. If I held off on getting a job until I needed the money, I would
probably appreciate having money more. I wouldn’t be so quick to spend money. I
would actually probably be a lot less impulsive. Instead, I got a job when
money wasn’t a necessity and I learned that money was largely a luxury, because
I was not required to save any of it.
Getting a job also interfered with
my very first play audition, which might explain why I enjoy acting so much. It
was the polar opposite of what I was doing at the time, and working was not
something I enjoyed. I do have a good work ethic, but there’s always a better
way I could be spending my time.
The perfect job, for me, is one
where I couldn’t picture myself being anywhere else.
A recap, briefly:
Birthday party, 5th grade.
1 out of 9 showed up, developed tendencies to favor single friends over groups.
My first job taught me that money
was to be spent, not saved. It also pigeonholed me away from my first play
audition.
Continuing on:
I did not get my driver’s lisence
at the age of 16 like most people. I got it before I turned 17. I depended
heavily on people to get me from point A to point B.
I started writing not out of
passion, out of lethargy. Not my own, out of the lethargy of other people. When
I would do scene work in my theatre class, I would be the only person to write
a script. They were generally well received, so I started writing more.
Monolouges, a short story here or there, what have you.
Writing, as a career, is not one
that needs college specifically. You can’t become a surgeon strictly through
trial and error, you can’t become a lawyer through guess and check. But to
write, all you have to know is what not to do. You can pick up a book without a
degree, learn the difference between “Whose” and “Who’s” and write a goddamned
novel that’s a best seller.
Given that my work was generally
well received, I thought I could turn a career out of it. As of yet, this is
unrealized.
If other people had taken the
iniative to put their feet forward, I wouldn’t have started writing. If I hadn’t
stood in front of a crowd and made them laugh, I probably wouldn’t do that
either. But making people laugh, that’s a good feeling.
Anyway, when the time came to
decide on a college, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew the
chances of getting into a college were going to be slim and time consuming.
Having not passed my foreign language classes, I was not eligble for an
advanced diploma, and having a GED won’t get you into college without a stellar
SAT score.
I didn’t try.
College, to me, has always seemed
superfluous. I’ve never known a person who couldn’t make a career out of what
they wanted without college, but those are the people I chose to surround
myself with. There wasn’t a person out there who told me that maybe college
would be a good idea, and that maybe I should reconsider.
I want very much to be a success
story without the help of college.
My mother didn’t go to college,
and she was a successful radio personality. My brother failed out twice and
seemed very happy. People were always supportive of the decisions I decided to
make, which is good. It’s good to have supportive people around you.
So, I went a lived in New York for a year
instead. I had 2 scripts rejected by SNL, but that was a lost cause. As it
turned out, to stay afloat another year, they hired a bunch of frat boys and
let some of their older folks go.
I ended up working in a movie
theatre with people I was smarter than. Having a couple of kids and having the
dad run off, that doesn’t make you smart, but it makes you think you’re smart.
Makes you think you’re worldly, like you’ve seen it all.
At some point, my trepidation to
try marijuana turned into a steadfast challenge of self control. I was
surrounded by the temptation constantly, but I had already allowed myself the
vice of alcohol. It became less a fear of the illegality, but a challenge of my
mettle. No matter how much fun I know I would have, I deprive myself just to
know that I can. I don’t drink anymore, either, because I’ve tried it. It was
fun. It really was. I stumbled. I was loud. But there was no one that wanted to
drink casually. It was nothing but getting drunk constantly. There was no
intelligent conversation, no discussion of politics over a glass of wine. There
was more stumbling. There was more falling. There was no classical music or
vocal dissertations of Citizen Kane.
I saw how absolutely God forsaken
stupid everyone was when I was the only sober person, and it made me feel
uneasy. It was a near continues string of getting fucked up night after night
and not looking back.
That has pushed me away from
drinking.
I wrote a novel in New York. It sucked and
was based around New York.
I also wrote a play while in New York.
It was good, but the production of it sucked. I had my first short story
published (first paying short story, no less!) in New York. It was about a quilt that eats
people. Very kitsch.
I moved back to Virginia when I was 19. Actually, it’s going
to be a year back tomorrow.
I wrote another book, for anyone that’s
counting, and I wrote another play.
Here’s another recap:
Birthday party, 5th grade.
1 out of 9 showed up, developed tendencies to favor single friends over groups.
My first job taught me that money
was to be spent, not saved. It also pigeonholed me away from my first play
audition, which drove me more towards acting.
Lethargy on the behalf of others
led me to begin writing, which eventually led to the decision not to go to
college. I also know people who have made something of themselves without
college, so it’s seemed unnecessary for me.
In New York, I drank. I chose not to smoke
marijuana as a test of self control. I realized quite how goofy everyone was
when they drank and opted to stave off drinking until I could drink in a
situation where it wasn’t “Get shitfaced or die trying!”
Due to my lazy nature towards
money, I moved back to Virginia.
--
Well, I don’t know quite what I’m
trying to accomplish by writing all of this. I think bunches, so, that might
have something to do with it. I’m also very tired, so that could factor in as
well.
Offering a veritable dissection
of my life to show why I am who I am is probably quite boring.
Who knows. Maybe I’ll start
posting here more. Maybe not. This might be a one-shot thing. I never really
feel the need to explain myself or what’s going on in my head very much because
people generally don’t ask or don’t feel the need to know.
But that’s that. I figure that
should explain some of the reasons why I act like I do.
Anyway, happy 20th!
Here’s to another 10 years!
(Fucking Base-10 counting system)
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