A Quick Bitch

I never know the next step. Fuck, I can barely remember the step I took to get here. I see all these busy little bees, milling around, becoming successful throughout the course of their lives and I say; "Hey! How did you do that? How did you know what to do next?"

The obvious answers pop up: Go to school, get a degree, be successful. It just seems to me like a few steps are missing in that plan...

I went to college. Afterward, I had a job in my chosen career path, and I hated it. I'm twenty-seven years old, and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. Well, that isn't particularly true. I have a list of things I think may be entertaining for a while. I'd like to run a small store. Comic books, or records or something. I'd like to be game show host (which, I am technically qualified to do). I'd like to be a writer. I'd like to run a charity organization. I'd like to do a lot of shit, but I can't really see myself doing anything and getting paid for it for my entire life. Somehow, it seems, the paychecks would taint the glory of the things I love. And so, I ask; what could I do for my entire life?

I see people doing jobs for decades. The same job, day in, day out. They work it for any number of reasons. They don't care, they need the cash, whatever. However, it almost never seems like anything they actually want to be doing. They burn through their lives forty to eighty hours at a time, toiling away miserably, or numb. I simply cannot fathom living like that. Going through life, living for the weekend, where you can look around at all of the shit you've accumulated in the amount of time you've been working for the paper mill, that you never actually have time to enjoy.

There is another part. Creating. Two or three times a week, my friend S. and I find ourselves coming back from a basement in a town about thirty miles from either of us, where we set up amplifiers and instruments, and scream our little hearts out until all hours of the morning. The next day, I am always tired, cloud-headed, and sore, so why do I do it? It makes me happy. It fills that gap that a working adulthood has created in my life. I have only so many years on the planet, and I have the capability to create, so I do. I fill boxes with cassettes and cd's. I fill hard drive after hard drive with music. I paint anything I can find, and I write like a motherfucker. Ten years may pass, but at the end of it, I will be able to look back, and not think of the exhausting nights, or the irritable mornings. I won't think of the gas money or the job I was working. Ten years will pass, and I will look back, and I will say "look at all this shit I made with my own hands. From my own brain."

"Why don't you make music for a living?"

Just kidding. That's so ridiculous, no one would ever say that.

I have been in the same job for two years now, and it's the longest I have ever had one job. I get so bored and frustrated, I always end up quitting, taking a month off, and finding something new. It all just gets so monotonous. Advancement is rarely something to get excited about, and to be honest, it seems like the responsibility/raise ratio of a promotion is rarely worth the effort. But I want to succeed. I want to be happy, and well off.

How do I get there?

Work hard. Save. Buy a house...

No no no. We've missed the point.

Welcome to my confused and confusing fucking head.



-A.