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.
Showing posts with label Lost Generation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lost Generation. Show all posts
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Modern Fatherhood
Let me tell you about some shit.
Like far too many in my generation, I grew up a product of a “broken home”, or a “dysfunctional family”, or as I (and not my various guidance counselors) like to say, fucked. Dad was a junkie who kicked the shit out of my mom a lot. Mom was an artist (and a good one) who gave up her dreams to raise her kids, and take his shit. I remember going on more than one drug run. In fact, when we had a car, it was usually Sunday. All Sunday. My sister and I would have to play with the dumbest fucking kids of whatever dealer my dad hadn’t fucked over yet. The part that disturbs me the most? The kids seldom wore shoes. Regardless of which dealer they belonged to. That part is just weird and a little gross to me. Anyway, Dad would leave us for weeks and months at a time every year for some trollup, or to binge somewhere in the backwoods with the same shit kicking wastes he had known since his two years in high school. Dad was a real piece of shit. One time, I remember, abandoning the three not-him members of our family in the middle of frozen nowhere, Maine, with no money, no car, nothing. I remember crying and missing him terribly all the time back then. I also remember my mother stepping up to the plate, and taking care of shit. My mother kicked ass. She was just terrified of him. I can’t blame her. I was too, when I wasn’t vying for his attention, or approval.
I see the clichés. I know this is the story of every do-nothing waste you know. That’s my point. What the fuck was going on in the 80’s and 90’s that did that to men? Was it their reaction to over-bearing fathers of the earlier generations? Were they just 70’s free spirits that refused to grow old (and who now, if not dead, are finding they do grow old, and painfully)?
Today, of the people I know, I can say that I know quite a few single parents, a surprising amount of them fathers, and there would be more if not for “moms” that think since He broke up with Her then He doesn’t deserve to raise his child, so She can collect support, social services, and be able to bitch to her friends about Him, the deadbeat. Wow, I struck a nerve of my own, there. Point being, a lot of guys I know are trying their hardest to be Dads.
Yes, we were all treated like shit throughout our childhoods. Yes, we are all scarred from what we have been forced to see and experience. Yes, we are permanently fucked in a lot of ways, but there is a silver lining. That generation of shitty fathers have spawned a generation of Dads. Dads that hold their children above all else. We are not the over bearing fathers of old. We are not the neglectful, the abusive, or selfish. We are the loving, respectful, and supportive dads. Not all of them, no, but a HUGE number of us.
I had kids young, and it was not easy. In fact, I had my first only two and a half years after my father disappeared. I was fifteen. I was a fucked up young punk, filled with anger, and looking for destruction. But as soon as the baby bump showed, my life was changed. It took me a while to beat adolescence and become the father I wanted to be, but I eventually did. Not exactly what my sons mothers wanted. I fought them both tooth and nail for fucking years for things that the court automatically gives to the mother, and takes from the father. Let me just say that the State of New York does not make it easy to be a single dad. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be. Fun fact; they don’t. New York state family courts actually make about 60 cents for every dollar they charge in child support, last I checked. Balanced, my ass.
Now, quickly, I have covered a little bit of ground here. Shitty 80’s fathers, 00’s dads stepping up, Baby Mommas, and family court. I have one last thing to say before I go;
Dads,
Hang in there. You don’t have to marry her. But love your kids. They deserve it.
Like far too many in my generation, I grew up a product of a “broken home”, or a “dysfunctional family”, or as I (and not my various guidance counselors) like to say, fucked. Dad was a junkie who kicked the shit out of my mom a lot. Mom was an artist (and a good one) who gave up her dreams to raise her kids, and take his shit. I remember going on more than one drug run. In fact, when we had a car, it was usually Sunday. All Sunday. My sister and I would have to play with the dumbest fucking kids of whatever dealer my dad hadn’t fucked over yet. The part that disturbs me the most? The kids seldom wore shoes. Regardless of which dealer they belonged to. That part is just weird and a little gross to me. Anyway, Dad would leave us for weeks and months at a time every year for some trollup, or to binge somewhere in the backwoods with the same shit kicking wastes he had known since his two years in high school. Dad was a real piece of shit. One time, I remember, abandoning the three not-him members of our family in the middle of frozen nowhere, Maine, with no money, no car, nothing. I remember crying and missing him terribly all the time back then. I also remember my mother stepping up to the plate, and taking care of shit. My mother kicked ass. She was just terrified of him. I can’t blame her. I was too, when I wasn’t vying for his attention, or approval.
I see the clichés. I know this is the story of every do-nothing waste you know. That’s my point. What the fuck was going on in the 80’s and 90’s that did that to men? Was it their reaction to over-bearing fathers of the earlier generations? Were they just 70’s free spirits that refused to grow old (and who now, if not dead, are finding they do grow old, and painfully)?
Today, of the people I know, I can say that I know quite a few single parents, a surprising amount of them fathers, and there would be more if not for “moms” that think since He broke up with Her then He doesn’t deserve to raise his child, so She can collect support, social services, and be able to bitch to her friends about Him, the deadbeat. Wow, I struck a nerve of my own, there. Point being, a lot of guys I know are trying their hardest to be Dads.
Yes, we were all treated like shit throughout our childhoods. Yes, we are all scarred from what we have been forced to see and experience. Yes, we are permanently fucked in a lot of ways, but there is a silver lining. That generation of shitty fathers have spawned a generation of Dads. Dads that hold their children above all else. We are not the over bearing fathers of old. We are not the neglectful, the abusive, or selfish. We are the loving, respectful, and supportive dads. Not all of them, no, but a HUGE number of us.
I had kids young, and it was not easy. In fact, I had my first only two and a half years after my father disappeared. I was fifteen. I was a fucked up young punk, filled with anger, and looking for destruction. But as soon as the baby bump showed, my life was changed. It took me a while to beat adolescence and become the father I wanted to be, but I eventually did. Not exactly what my sons mothers wanted. I fought them both tooth and nail for fucking years for things that the court automatically gives to the mother, and takes from the father. Let me just say that the State of New York does not make it easy to be a single dad. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be. Fun fact; they don’t. New York state family courts actually make about 60 cents for every dollar they charge in child support, last I checked. Balanced, my ass.
Now, quickly, I have covered a little bit of ground here. Shitty 80’s fathers, 00’s dads stepping up, Baby Mommas, and family court. I have one last thing to say before I go;
Dads,
Hang in there. You don’t have to marry her. But love your kids. They deserve it.
A Spontaneous Rant on Passion and the Lost Generation
My entire life I have wanted to write. If you go through my millions of notebooks, you'll find a library full of half finished short stories, novels, poetry, and rants. Well, maybe not anymore. Two years ago, I decided to pull a Jim Morrison and took a large box full of my most important (to me) notebooks, and threw them in a bonfire. Almost twenty years worth of material burned away. The next morning a fucking forest ranger gave me a ticket for camping too close to water. It cost me almost two hundred dollars. I wonder if that meant something. Anyways...
I tried to find a voice, a direction. I tried to stylize, and compare myself to the people I admired. By the time I was in my early twenties, working kitchens and gas stations, I was claiming victim.
"The system! It holds me down!" I would say.
"I'll be like Emily Dickinson! You'll see!"
"Opportunity will come to me!"
Arrogance.
Usually, however, it would come down to the terribly destructive inner monologue of "This is all shit, and so am I." Regardless of what Hollywood sells you, self-depreciation does not create beautiful works. It does not make you cool and mysterious. It sucks the life out of you and leaves you empty, constantly doubting, constantly unsure, void of confidence.
Sure, maybe everything you do really is shit. Hell, maybe even you are, also. Maybe you steal food from the poor elderly. Maybe you tie your children up in the basement and feed them only potato eyes. I don't know. Chance are though, you aren't, and even if you TRULY only make shit, you don't have to. You can grow. You can force yourself to be better. You are capable of more.
This little thing I am writing, you are reading, right now? It's far from the best thing I have ever written, sure. It is also far from the worst. In fact, I am only writing it to keep myself in the practice of writing. On New Years Eve, 2009, I made a promise to myself that I would take my love more seriously. I would write (and finish) a short story or something equal to it, every week. It was daunting, to say the least, once I sat down to actually do it. The first thing I wrote was a seventeen page short story called "Nowhere to Warsaw in Eight Days". It took fourteen consecutive hours, and is terrible (although less terrible than I initially judged it to be). After that I wrote more and more, ending 2010 with seventy-three complete pieces and somewhere around twenty unfinished. From nothing to almost a hundred in a year. It may be a weak effort to a seasoned writer, but to me, it was a hell of an accomplishment. This year, I set another goal. 3000 pages, including at least one novel.
I am two hundred pages into the novel. It may seem like a tremendous goal, and to tell you the truth, it seems absolutely impossible to me, but I am going to do it. I can't see the future, but I am not going to let myself do anything less than amaze myself, even if no one else sees it like I do. Even if people read it and say "this is trash." Fuck you. It's my trash.
I'm not just jerking off on your toes. There is a point to all of this.
I, as well as millions of people my age, am a member of what has been referred to as the "lost generation". The generation that did everything we were supposed to, and got shit on. We were born under Reagan, took our fluoride, got good grades, graduated with honors, went through college, got jobs, and busted ass. What did we get in return? An ever-rising cost of living that no single entry-level income could possibly support, government programs being yanked out from under our communities feet, layoffs en masse by no-faced employers who expect nothing but loyalty without ever reciprocating. We got insurmountable debt. We got wars all over the globe. We got a generation-wide feeling of "why am I doing any of this?"
Ten years ago, being successful was being happy. Today, among my peers, save for a few stragglers, being happy has little to nothing to do with financial success. It is all about spending your life how you want. Not droning away in an office chair carpal-tunneling your way to middle management like our parents, no. It means getting just far enough to be able to do what we want on the side. We work for rent, electricity, food, clothes, and gas. We no longer work for the sake of working. Sure, we know that having a decent car and a little bit of spending cash is nice, but what is the point when almost an entire generation is paid close to or under the poverty line and when we get a little ahead, taxes, or some "bank error" (in November 2008 I lost $10,000 thanks to the crash. Seriously.), throws us right back in the shit-pit?
We have watched the youth of our parents fade. We watched them stop doing the things they love. Fixing cars, painting, dreaming. We watched them age and spend forty to fifty years worrying about their last ten. My mother went to an art college. She painted, and beautifully. She was able to create intensely vivid and detailed landscapes like it was second nature. She would post them around the house, and in a life of eternal winter, it made her smile. Eventually, she stopped. She worked more and more. Saved, and slaved. I haven't seen a new painting in over fifteen years. It was her dream, that she gave up, so she could be in nearly the same position I am in now.
This is what that generation has taught us. Do what you love, or don't, you'll still end up in the same boat. Ask the elderly Wal-Mart greeters. It's all a matter of if you want to be happy.
My point is, if you have to slave away, don't give up on the things you love. always make time for them. Even if you aren't feeling it, do it. Don't let weeks and months and years go by. Don't let it ever be "too late". It's exactly what I am doing now. I don't even want to write this shit today. I have a strong feeling that it is unfocused, sloppy, and preachy. But I want to write, and if I ever want to write something I am truly proud of, that maybe some other people will like, then I have to do this. I have to practice, and I have to try to be a WRITER. I am going to work my job. Save a little cash when I can, and maybe I will achieve the ending to life I have always imagined (old man, back porch, summer evening, staring at the water, smiling). Maybe I won't. But no matter how I slip into the darkness, I want to be happy when I do. So, I am going to continue to focus on what I love. It's really all that matters in the end.
-A.
I tried to find a voice, a direction. I tried to stylize, and compare myself to the people I admired. By the time I was in my early twenties, working kitchens and gas stations, I was claiming victim.
"The system! It holds me down!" I would say.
"I'll be like Emily Dickinson! You'll see!"
"Opportunity will come to me!"
Arrogance.
Usually, however, it would come down to the terribly destructive inner monologue of "This is all shit, and so am I." Regardless of what Hollywood sells you, self-depreciation does not create beautiful works. It does not make you cool and mysterious. It sucks the life out of you and leaves you empty, constantly doubting, constantly unsure, void of confidence.
Sure, maybe everything you do really is shit. Hell, maybe even you are, also. Maybe you steal food from the poor elderly. Maybe you tie your children up in the basement and feed them only potato eyes. I don't know. Chance are though, you aren't, and even if you TRULY only make shit, you don't have to. You can grow. You can force yourself to be better. You are capable of more.
This little thing I am writing, you are reading, right now? It's far from the best thing I have ever written, sure. It is also far from the worst. In fact, I am only writing it to keep myself in the practice of writing. On New Years Eve, 2009, I made a promise to myself that I would take my love more seriously. I would write (and finish) a short story or something equal to it, every week. It was daunting, to say the least, once I sat down to actually do it. The first thing I wrote was a seventeen page short story called "Nowhere to Warsaw in Eight Days". It took fourteen consecutive hours, and is terrible (although less terrible than I initially judged it to be). After that I wrote more and more, ending 2010 with seventy-three complete pieces and somewhere around twenty unfinished. From nothing to almost a hundred in a year. It may be a weak effort to a seasoned writer, but to me, it was a hell of an accomplishment. This year, I set another goal. 3000 pages, including at least one novel.
I am two hundred pages into the novel. It may seem like a tremendous goal, and to tell you the truth, it seems absolutely impossible to me, but I am going to do it. I can't see the future, but I am not going to let myself do anything less than amaze myself, even if no one else sees it like I do. Even if people read it and say "this is trash." Fuck you. It's my trash.
I'm not just jerking off on your toes. There is a point to all of this.
I, as well as millions of people my age, am a member of what has been referred to as the "lost generation". The generation that did everything we were supposed to, and got shit on. We were born under Reagan, took our fluoride, got good grades, graduated with honors, went through college, got jobs, and busted ass. What did we get in return? An ever-rising cost of living that no single entry-level income could possibly support, government programs being yanked out from under our communities feet, layoffs en masse by no-faced employers who expect nothing but loyalty without ever reciprocating. We got insurmountable debt. We got wars all over the globe. We got a generation-wide feeling of "why am I doing any of this?"
Ten years ago, being successful was being happy. Today, among my peers, save for a few stragglers, being happy has little to nothing to do with financial success. It is all about spending your life how you want. Not droning away in an office chair carpal-tunneling your way to middle management like our parents, no. It means getting just far enough to be able to do what we want on the side. We work for rent, electricity, food, clothes, and gas. We no longer work for the sake of working. Sure, we know that having a decent car and a little bit of spending cash is nice, but what is the point when almost an entire generation is paid close to or under the poverty line and when we get a little ahead, taxes, or some "bank error" (in November 2008 I lost $10,000 thanks to the crash. Seriously.), throws us right back in the shit-pit?
We have watched the youth of our parents fade. We watched them stop doing the things they love. Fixing cars, painting, dreaming. We watched them age and spend forty to fifty years worrying about their last ten. My mother went to an art college. She painted, and beautifully. She was able to create intensely vivid and detailed landscapes like it was second nature. She would post them around the house, and in a life of eternal winter, it made her smile. Eventually, she stopped. She worked more and more. Saved, and slaved. I haven't seen a new painting in over fifteen years. It was her dream, that she gave up, so she could be in nearly the same position I am in now.
This is what that generation has taught us. Do what you love, or don't, you'll still end up in the same boat. Ask the elderly Wal-Mart greeters. It's all a matter of if you want to be happy.
My point is, if you have to slave away, don't give up on the things you love. always make time for them. Even if you aren't feeling it, do it. Don't let weeks and months and years go by. Don't let it ever be "too late". It's exactly what I am doing now. I don't even want to write this shit today. I have a strong feeling that it is unfocused, sloppy, and preachy. But I want to write, and if I ever want to write something I am truly proud of, that maybe some other people will like, then I have to do this. I have to practice, and I have to try to be a WRITER. I am going to work my job. Save a little cash when I can, and maybe I will achieve the ending to life I have always imagined (old man, back porch, summer evening, staring at the water, smiling). Maybe I won't. But no matter how I slip into the darkness, I want to be happy when I do. So, I am going to continue to focus on what I love. It's really all that matters in the end.
-A.
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