it's hard to write on the blog on the computer

If I'm about to blog something I wouldn't enjoy reading myself, I generally delete it and don't post. And if I'm about to blog something personal that can't be disclosed to the general public, then I generally delete it and don't post. I have been sitting here for at least a half hour trying to figure out how to talk about some things that I'd like people to know.

And there's no way to do it right.

There are people who deserve not to be subjected (or subject further) to my writing about them publicly. And yet anything important I tell you about my life right now will eventually lead to things I can't say if I'm to respect their privacy.

So . . . pardon the lack of here's-what's-been-going-on. Here are the musings.

After re-reading a few posts back, it's embarrassing for me to say: I'm happy right now. I thought that was going to be impossible for some time to come. I thought I was supposed to wear the mantle of the tortured young journeyman/Everyman. There was something so sweet about that indulgent yet heroic vision of myself. Prolonged pain would make me better. It would within a certain time frame--set by me--grind me down into the richest of clay and then whatever it is that's magical about the world (please let it be God, please let it be God) would shape me into the postmodern superhero that I secretly believe I am. I have to be special, I have to be in some way different than every other man who's come before me. And what hero was ever birthed out of a rural-suburban, middle class life fraught with comfort? Call it white guilt meets white flight. I don't have the right to be happy, do I? Happiness is supposed to come from within--or some shit like that. And I figured that in order to get my insides working right, I'd have to give them a good thrashing--back to the rich clay thing again. It's very odd to realize that I have on one hand the highest regard for myself (superhero), and at the same time the greatest of contempt.

I'm thinking that while I stand over here and look smugly upon those people who cling so tightly to their religion or their staunch humanism or whatever it is, I'm actually standing with my tongue stuck to a frozen pole of extremism. I can't make sense of a reality that doesn't involve extreme bad (hell! Mwahahahahaha), extreme good (ultimate truth), and extreme solutions to struggles that everyone faces. I've been demanding the life of Hemingway meets the life of Job as the only way to find my heaven. It seems impossible to accept that maybe I'm just not that special . . .

"We were raised on television to believe
that we'd all be millionares, movie gods,
rock stars, but we won't. And we're
starting to figure that out."

. . . and yet there's something really good about it. There's something sustainable here. Like maybe that essential rock-bottom doesn't have to mean the same thing to me as it does to Tyler Durden. And maybe rock-bottom's overrated.

That said, I'm not counting my dinosaurs before they've eaten all the tourists. No, wait. The forest for the trees. Counting them, I mean. The trees. Because they ate . . the

I'm also really thinking that happiness is a lot more accidental than we like to admit. It may not be that you win the lottery and become happy. But I still think that some of us were not meant to be happy. Where would rock be without Nirvana and where would Nirvana be if Kurt had been an Osmond? So I haven't won any lottery. But I do think I've been getting lucky lately, and I'm not especially inclined to think of this as "the way things ought to be." The trick now, I feel, is going to be figuring out how to make sense of it. There are good things about wanting to be a hero, wanting to save the world, realizing the scariness of existence, and I'm not about to let them go completely. I feel utterly ill-equipped to be happy and 27. We'll see where this goes.