( This piece has no literary value. From the late-night beer-infused Saturday night rant series)
The cold beer feels great going down my throat. I actually feel fucking great. I fucking love my beer. I fucking love to just sit back, play some music, drink my beer, knowing that there is nothing else I have to or want to do. There is a vinyl record spinning on the turntable. I realized that I hadn’t used the turntable in a while. What a shame. I have over two hundred records collecting dust, but I am not doing shit about it. I know I have them. I know where they are. I realize what a bunch of great fucking record collections I have, but I’m just too busy dealing with life to enjoy that music. I just keep forgetting to get back to it, to enjoy it a little bit. There are records that I acquired years ago, and I still remember where I bought them and sometimes even how much I paid for them. Certain memories stay with you forever. They might not always be the most important memories, but there is something special about them, so I still have some recollection of the time and space, my life then, my experiences, and my thoughts… Music is one of the greatest things in life. It can be both tangible and intangible. You can just sing the song out loud, and it would make you feel happy. But also, you can have a 180 mg vinyl playing on the turntable, which would bring the greatest joy and satisfaction. I am not a hoarder, but I do love collecting certain things. I love to have them, to see them, to touch them, to smell them. I am a young fella, but I do love the old shit. The old music makes me feel great. The black and white movies make me happy as well. It seems like back in the old days of black and white TV, or when music was pressed on vinyl, life was so much fucking better. It seems like life back then was more fun, it was more real, and authentic, and you could feel and smell things and get a great sense of the past life. I get some sort of weird nostalgia while experiencing the old things, the old school, the old way. I think that even cigarettes were a hundred times better for you back then. Somehow, the more we advance as a civilization, the deeper we get into the nowhere. Somehow the things are so fucking dull and tasteless and surreal that I don’t even what to be part of any of it. Fuck it all. I want to be real. I want the real shit. I want good wine or beer, a good piece of meat, a good cigarette, and fresh morning air filling my lungs. I want the smell of a freshly printed paperback. Nothing smells better than a fresh, brand-new paperback or a cup of great, freshly brewed coffee. I mean, how much do you really need to be happy? If you really think about it, it is not that much. The little things always make the man feel alive, feel like a man, and that life is worth something. These are the nights in white satin, and there is so much about the nights, and satin, and music, and beer, and life, and cigarette burning in your hand while you sit back and let go. Just go on. Let me take a little breather. Let me take a little break from all the fucking madness, for fuck’s sake. Do I have to be present, worried, and responsible for everything? Sometimes, I feel like I can move mountains. But sometimes, the opposite is true. Sometimes, I just want to fuck off. I want to sit on my sofa in my basement, endlessly drinking my beer while listening to music and writing down all my nonsense. One day, I decided I wanted to be a writer. And I became one. I don’t write all that much, but I have written a lot. I am trying to be to stay productive. Before, it felt like a foreign concept. It felt like a dream. And then, some days later, I made that dream come true. I made that dream come to life, giving me something to live for and strive for. It usually takes me a lot of time to come around, but when I do, I am on it. I love watching myself becoming a new me. The old me was a dick, a confused nobody, a lowlife, a useless fuck. Once I overcame that mental roadblock and explored new territories, things started to move, to come about, and things started to happen. Good shit started to happen. And I couldn’t be more happy with that. I couldn’t be more happy with myself. And I couldn’t be happier seeing myself producing the words through poems and the short stories that eventually became books years later. Fuck. I fucking made it. I fucking made it happen. I became a true writer. Something that was just a dream and some sort of delusional obsession had become my new reality. I am a writer with two self-published books, and the third one is in the closing stages. I am doing something. I am being productive, maybe not as productive as I could’ve been, but slowly and surely, shit is happening. And now, looking back, I don’t feel bad at all. I feel satisfied. I feel like I made my dream a reality. I am a writer. Even though no fans are knocking at my door. Even though there are no sales and book lists. Even though there are no book deals, I still outperformed my old self from those early desperate years, and I have some proof to show for it. But mainly, I proved to myself that the dream is possible. A simple dream is possible for anyone, even losers, as I have been for most of my life. Dream your dreams, my friend, and go after them. It will open a new world for you worth something. It is definitely much better than sitting on your ass doing nothing at all, waiting for death to come and take you away, or waiting for the next day, just hopelessly hoping it would bring anything better. I waited a fair amount of time in my life this far. I have no fucking patience no more. I want it all, and I want it now. I have no time to waste. I have no time to lose. The only fucking thing I do have besides my sorry-ass is the time, and I am on that fucker all the time. I hate to waste time. I hate to lose it. I hate somebody else taking and wasting my fucking time. I guess there is a reason why I own ten watches. I do fucking have a deep appreciation for the time and watchmaking, indeed. I cherish every minute that goes by, goes sideways, into infinity as I get older and wiser or dumber, or whatever. Time is a fascinating thing. It comes through you and leaves scars on your soul and face in the form of sadness, anxiety, deep wrinkles, gray hair, and bad eyesight. Time is all we have…
The clock struck twelve am six minutes ago, and that’s how you know it is the beginning of another day. It is still very early or late, depending on how you look at it. How do you look at it? I haven’t slept yet, so it is getting late, and somebody might just be waking up. Who the fuck knows? It is five o’clock somewhere in the world. I am up and about my business, sitting around on my couch typing whatever nonsense comes to my head. What else is there to do? I don’t have a job to go to. It is Saturday, to begin with. The kid is asleep, and so is my wife. I am the only weirdo in the family who likes to stay up late and drink and write and ramble about random shit. So, here we go. Another shitstorm begins. I am listening to the greatest heavy metal playlist I have ever created, and it kicks ass. It has everything that I need this night to get me through. And I have plenty of beer to help me along. “I don’t believe in love” comes from the speaker by Queensryche band, which sounds really sad and romantic at the same time. Love is love. Love is us. Love is life. Love is losing your mind. Love is ruthless. Somebody must have had a bad relationship after all. Haven’t we all had at least one? Sometimes the shit goes sideways, and you know you are trapped here unless you make that tough decision. And sometimes you feel like, fuck, I might give it another chance. I just don’t want to act on impulse anymore. This still might work out to the best. And often, it doesn’t. I learned it the hard way. I have nothing to hold back. I have no regrets. Whatever happened, happened, what’s next is up to me. I moved on a long time ago because I wanted something new, fresh, authentic, and something that felt right. Not that same old annoying, soul-killing horseshit that I know would never end. We all should move on. Should you follow your head, or should you follow your heart? That is a question that has no right answer. Sometimes it’s the first. Sometimes, it’s the second. And sometimes it is both. I did both many times. I thought it was right to follow my heart because this is where the truth was. Because following your heart would make you happy. Many times it is just a bunch of bullshit. Many times, you should be wise enough to separate the delusion from reality. We all learn this too late after the fuckup settles down. I am looking at my typewriter, which I received for my 35th birthday. I only used it several times since last year. It is a sad acknowledgment. I still prefer my laptop for writing. It is much quicker and almost noiseless. That fucking machine is too loud, and the time is always wrong for me to use it. I think this machine could wake up my neighbors. I want my neighbors to be happy. I don’t want any shit from anybody. But that is not my point. My point is that I am not fully living the life I aspired to live. I want to be a writer and a great writer with that. I am not. A glass half full. I suck. But I still write. Some minimal improvements are happening along the way. I am just not letting it all go to shit. I still want to be here and to write and, one fucking long-time coming day, become a great American writer. What’s wrong with my wish? Nothing. It is my wish. I can wish for whatever the fuck I want. Not everyone was born with that kind of desire. Many people are asleep now or at the bar somewhere or watching the fucking TV in their beds, but I am here, typing, drinking, smoking, and writing. I want to be here. I have planned this moment for myself to be here and to do this, and l love it. And I do what I love and do not have much else to do. History repeats itself yet again. Nobody learned from history nothing. We all are repeating the same fucking lame mistakes or are falling into the same fucking traps as we all did back in the day. I have been fired from a job for the third time since my professional employment began over ten years ago. I am still young, sharp, and driven, sometimes or most of the time. I don’t give much shit about any corporate agendas. I am just trying to play the game right. And sometimes, you can get by, and sometimes you can’t. And I was just too fucking tired and annoyed with all that playing around and pushing it along with nobody else giving much fuck. At the same time, work consumed me and my life and my mind and my soul, leaving me with misery and stress and depression and bleeding. I knew this would happen to me one day. It always does. But I kept that bullshit going. I was too happy and comfortable to see a steady bi-weekly paycheck in my bank account, and I was all right with selling my soul to the devil. Am I a sellout? To some extent, yes. But why would anybody reject a well-paying job? Let me milk this cow until there is no milk left, until all the well dries off until I am sick and tired of doing it. My biggest problem was that I hadn’t spent enough time on my writing while busy with a fucking job. That’s why my typewriter wasn’t utilized as it should have been. That’s why I haven’t written as much as I had hoped. That’s how the comfortable living made me fucking lazy and made me a slave to the system. I partially gave up on anything near and dear to my heart and followed the dollar signs. Now, I don’t have anything to my name. All I have is just me. All I have are just my proletarian hopes, dreams, and useless inspirations. Why wouldn’t I follow my dreams? Why wouldn’t I bank on my writing career? Why do I always feel guilty when I have to enjoy every little fucking moment of my life because I am only going around once!? No, there’s no one home in my house of pain except me. I am sitting here and meditating on some deep life philosophy, trying to figure out where I did anything wrong, alone on my sad couch. It is really not that painful. It feels just about okay now. Actually, it feels fucking great not to go to work, not to work for a man, not to sacrifice anything of mine for the sake of others. I have my family with me. That is all I need. They make me go. I love them dearly. I don’t give a fuck about anything else at all. I just want to be around them always and be happy with them. I want to be a famous writer. I want to live and be completely independent no matter what I do. That is where the happiness is hiding, in that strange, obscure territory. Every time you tell yourself no or go against your heart, something slowly dies inside you, and the light turns into darkness, and a little piece of your life goes nowhere. I’d rather have my life be more meaningful and enjoyable, no matter how long or short. I want to live however I want, regardless of whether that plays against anybody else’s agenda. Fuck them all. This is my life. This is my beer. This is my writing. This is my soul. Life is great. I love it no matter what. No matter the weather, I am here, and I am alive, and I can always make shit happen. And I should always make shit happen for me. Sometimes, it is good to go away. Sometimes relocation is an option and a great one. Sometimes, you can’t move your brain somewhere else and forget about your existence, always pilling up more problems. Sometimes you just got to live that fucking life you’ve always wanted because there might not be another tomorrow. Or the tomorrow you will see will be full of shit and misery, and there might not be a place for you. Buddhists don’t rely on logic. They believe in enlightenment (nirvana) that comes from within, and no logic or intellect can do the same or explain that phenomenon. And I think this makes total fucking sense in my situation right now. The only way to see your life from a different perspective is to live your life like you never did but always wanted. And that means to go against the rules, against common sense, against logic, intellect, the rationality, against anything traditional or normal, against anything that others say or think, and just be there, enjoy that moment, live it fully, see it from the other side, feel the power of being you, feel the power of being a rouge, feel the power of a unique perspective and thinking and capture that experience forever, and let it remind you that you can do whatever the fuck you want and enjoy it because most of the others can’t. They’re too weak, too scared, too insecure, too normal, and too shallow. When do you think you should be fully living and enjoying this life? When you retire? How fucking sure are you that you will ever retire? How fucking sure that there will be any fucking energy or life or passion left in you when you fucking pushing 70 and you don’t have to go to work every day. But then, what do you do? Travel the world? Why wouldn’t you travel it now? Drink all the drinks, fuck all you can, smoke all you can, travel all you can, and do whatever fuck you want to do now while there is some light and life and energy, passion, and spirit inside of you begging for more and begging for freedom now. Why would you want to suppress that? For a steady paycheck? For job security? For healthcare insurance? For acknowledgment from others? For economy? For fucking what? “Your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission,” these great words by Charles Bukowski from the poem “The Laughing Heart” are so true and inspiring and so spot on. That’s why I love Bukowski. His poems have a lot of wisdom for an average man to understand, especially this poem. This is why I am writing. This is why I am still at it. This is why I often question myself about how to live this fucking life, so I don’t lose or don’t end up in fucking misery. I might not live forever, but my words and my wisdom can. As long as these are true worlds, as long as these words mean something, they will. They resonate with another lost soul and help it move forward, explore, take risks, and get that one experience that will change the life forever. I am one decision away from getting to where I always wanted to be. It is not a logical or not rational decision, but it will lead me to my happy place. Those Buddhists were on to something. I’m sure. Is the longing for something beautiful, truly inspiring, and relaxing worth the risk of hitting rock bottom? Is it worth risking the uncertainty of tomorrow for a few days of happiness? Is money always a major obstacle in getting to where you want to be? They say being scared means you’re about to do something really brave. Don’t let the unknown stop you from progressing. Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. And that fire should keep you warm and safe all the time, and all other bullshit will go away. Amen!
I don’t know what I don’t know, but I do know something. It is hard to tell if I am wrong or right most of the time, but I have a logic to my madness. I don’t even know where all the madness comes from, but it is there. It is near. I can feel it. I can see it. I am it in a way. We are all crazy in one way or the other, and this is how this world works, and this is how this life works. It makes us all fucking crazy, you know it or not. The chaos can drive people crazy as much as too much discipline. We all try to bounce left or right or up and down to keep our balance, but it is not always easy. It is never easy. Nothing is easy, and nothing is free. Somebody has to pay for your lunch. We have the wisdom there is. We have philosophers, writers, and so many smart people to guide us, but we rarely listen. We’d rather make our own mistakes and learn from them, hopefully. What is the recipe for a happy life? Who knows? Everybody’s life is different, and everybody should take their own path. Still, somehow we all wind up in the same pile of shit, madness, confusion, misery, depression, desperation, and so on. And then we are trying to get out, realizing what has happened to us. We are stumping on each other, pushing each other out of our way, making our way out, and then falling deep down into an even bigger pile of shit. That is life. It is crazy. It is chaotic, and we have to find our way, our path, our love, our madness, and some cigarettes and wine to make it a smooth ride home.
I’ve been going crazy for a very long time now. It is not just one thing that derailed me. There are plenty. Like losing a job. Losing the only income for the family. Not being able to provide anymore while relying on governments support. Losing people around me, losing friends, losing my mind and soul, to what? There was nothing to make me happy and nothing satisfied. All those books, meditations, warm summer weather, and the birds in the sky, nothing mattered. I always knew one truth. And the truth is that nothing will remain the same. Things will change. Things will turn around, and I will be a different man living a different life, a better life. I never knew when that moment would come, but I knew it would, sooner or later. And it fucking did. I never realized how much I was sucked into the system, the same system that was eating me alive, feeding me bullshit, and sucking me in deeper and deeper each day. Now that I have been out of it for a long time, I know that I didn’t matter, the system didn’t matter, the bullshit didn’t matter, and that you could live without all that shit. I couldn’t see clearly then. But now I do.
The dark clouds obscuring my vision have vanished, and the sun came up over my head, and while it was blinding me during the daylight, I could see like never before. My senses came back, the smile on the blank face reemerged, the meaning of life returned, or at least the feeling of one came back to me to help me get out of that hole. Today is a new day. It is a better day for many reasons. The main reason is that I am still alive and kicking. The other reason is that I have something to live up to and go after, and the realization that the writer inside of me was still there. He was scared, shy, not interested, and not willing to be present when I needed him, but he was back, and so was I. Also, my closest people are still with me, which means they are real, they are true, and they are my people. It means that life is worth living for.
And just like that, there goes another cold drink and another pack of cigarettes. This is all meant to help me get the fuck out of my head, take it easy, forget, ignore, procrastinate. Was it helping? Fuck if I know. Rather distracting. But that is the only way I know how to deal with tough shit in life. Countless bottles of alcohol and cigarettes and so many dark, long nights and dark, sad thoughts about my future and miserable present, and I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as of recently. I think I do. There isn’t much of light, but it beats darkness, as Bukowski said long ago. That is a perfect poem and a perfect line. I wish I read it sooner. I wish I had understood so many things sooner; I wouldn’t have to be in the same dark hole. I guess we all learn a few things about life a little too late after the fact. I think this is how life works for most people. Definitely for me. I have to burn myself, sometimes multiple times, to learn my lessons and clearly see what is what and who is who.
I am not a bad man, but I am a sad man. I am sad most of the time, and there is sadness in anything I see, good or bad. It is all around me. I am sad about the present because there is always too much shit to deal with and battle through. I am sad about the future because I can see none. All I can see is the darkness and nothing. I am sad about my three years old son, who was lucky to be born here in this country, but the future, just in general, is not promising anything good long-term. Somehow, as optimistic as I am, I try to stay true to myself and real and cold-headed, which leads me into darkness and sadness. Fuckness. Things just seemed so smooth and easy and fun when I was younger. Somehow, when you become an adult, and I think this is part of becoming an adult, is that you see things from a more realistic and also consider all the obstacles and dangers; you know that this world is just full of shit and madness. I don’t require much. I am not a selfish and delusional asshole; I know exactly what and how much I want in this life. The bare minimum, like a quiet and free life by the beach, worryless. I want to live my life, do my thing, and never worry about any bills to pay or economic crisis, recessions, crazy politicians, climate change, cancer, traffic, jobs, and misery of it all. I just want to live for a moment and be able to enjoy it fully. Is it that much to ask for?
The romance of the youth is a disaster plan for an adult. It takes time to realize those things. It takes time, casualties, years, broken hearts, hundreds of cigarettes, and gallons of liquor to figure it all out. There is no easy way to learn it otherwise. Nothing is meant to be easy. You and I had to face the real issues face to face and stay strong in our beliefs and push our way out of the bullshit and into a better life if we only could. Things that seemed so glorious and great at one point in time don’t seem so great all the time. Later on, many of those great things seem like a bunch of dumb ideas.
We change. Our thoughts and beliefs change. Our jobs change. Our life changes, and so do the stock market indexes and the weather and all those things. And who knows the real truth of it all? Who knows the right path anymore? I don’t. Maybe it is better not to know. Maybe living in constant expectation of a surprise or a disaster is the way to go. That is a good question to ask and look for an answer years from now. Time will tell. Time never sleeps, never rests, and doesn’t give a shit about you and me and our problems and issues. It always keeps moving. We should always keep moving. Movement is life. Life requires some basic movement. It’s that simple.
Times New Roman is a perfect font. I don’t know who determined that, but it is what they say, mostly a widely used font for writing. I write like that. Why the fuck not? I am walking through the clouds and writing my prose and poems like nobody’s business in this crazy fucking world of ours. Sometimes it feels like it is the end of the next closest thing to it as we can get, but then the next day, it’s alright. We’ll power through. We’ll live. We’ll write more books, songs, and poetry and create even more disparity in the universe because we are the people, and that’s what we do. That’s why we are here on this planet to fuck things up and then think about how to solve this. Cigarettes taste good even if they kill. Even if they fucking stink, we still smoke them passionately and on impulse because our bodies crave that chemical shit and our bodies need more of it. The hangovers are harder than ever as you age as you get older, and who am I to tell you? You should know that. It is a fact. My hangovers were so much more severe right after passing thirty. Is it the age that is not keeping up with the young spirit, or is it our desperate bodies that cannot handle that shit anymore? I am not a doctor, don’t ask me. I am just a writer, an addict, a drinker, a family man, a working man, and a writer nobody knows. I just write and spit and shit and try to help myself and hopefully others somehow. It is late March, and it is still fucking cold, and that fact alone is depressing as anything else is depressing in this life. I am sick of depression and being depressed. Fuck depression, I want love, I want crazy passionate sex, I want a beer with a cigarette and have no regret tomorrow or ever. I want to live my life how I want it, not how society, the church, or the establishment wants me to live my life. Why don’t they worry about their own shit? Why don’t they worry about saving this world from other things and problems? I am not a pessimist but rather an optimistic realist. The reality these days is not what anyone wants to live through. It seems like there isn’t much to do to save this fucking and completely insane world of ours. We are on the verge of world war three, nuclear war, a major fucking world pandemic, chemical war, and the war on genders and equality and race and veganism, you name it. I don’t know what to do with all of it, and neither do you. Trust me, you can have your opinions, as can I, but who really gives a fuck and who really is helping to solve anything? All we do is deepened that hole in the normality of our existence. I wish I could save the world. I wish I could write like Hemingway. I wish I could have the largest balls of them all. I wish I never spotted playing guitar. But I don’t, and more than likely, neither do you. So we just live our lives day in and day out, and we keep questioning the same questions with no answers and no solutions, and this has become normal. More often than not, we don’t even ask any questions anymore. We don’t even give a shit about any kind of critical thinking or whatever. All that music in the world, any fucking music one can imagine, is available to anyone’s taste at any point in time. I find it impossible to pick what I want to listen to most of the time. There are so many streaming channels on TV and apps and shit, and it takes forever to pick a show or a movie to watch. And then I do pick something; it is often some stupid shit that doesn’t make sense and is obviously a wrong choice and a waste of time. Halfway through, I don’t even pay any attention to it. Are we spoiled too much? Fuck yeh! The deficit and the scarcity or limitation of supplies create more demand for something. The law of economy. Works like a fucking charm all the time, every time. I wish we never run out of beer. Beer is important. Cigarettes are important. Music is important. Books are important. Lunch is way too fucking important. We cannot not have it. We can’t say no to these things. We live for them to have them, own them, and consume all of them. As Pink Floyd sings, “Welcome, my son, welcome to the machine.” Everything is being controlled by the system, everything is a machine of some sort or kind, and you and I and everyone else are part of it. We are the main ingredients for it. We make that shit work. We make that wheel spin and evolve and progress. We don’t even know why. Why is this the most annoying type of question? Nobody has any fucking clue or patience for it. It just hangs over us like a fucking brick occasionally hits us in the head when the time is right. Fucking time is always on the money. There is just, in general, so little time for anything. I have so many wishes, desires, needs, and hobbies I want to maintain, but I don’t have any time. We have the sun, but we don’t have the time, honey. Owning ten watches is not helping you to keep the fucking time still. It doesn’t help to keep the accurate time either. All these watches help us understand how fucking miserable and incompetent and powerless we are against it. Time will make us old and ugly and sick and eventually dead. Time is running fast as a motherfucker, with no mercy, no soul, and not even a thought about slowing down. You can throw away all your watches, but this fucker will never stop counting down. Then you will look into a mirror, and you will see another person there. That face looks familiar but is not what I feel like. It is not what I imagined I look like. It always looks much worst in the mirror than we think it is. Am I too optimistic about myself and how I look? Or maybe that fucking mirror has no soul and has no problem showing me the truth? I know I do a lot of stupid shit intentionally, not in my favor, but I always have an excuse. I always have something to defend myself with. I always have something to stand by. There is a reason why I drink something every day. There is a reason why I cannot ever quit smoking cigarettes. There is a reason I am a nervous fucking wrack many times. The reason is in that fucking mirror staring at me with a tired, confused, and disappointed face wondering. This is life, I’d say. Life has been getting to me. Life is happening. Life is what it is and time is what it is, and we are who we are. We can change, I’m sure. We should be changing and constantly evolving. I am more than convinced. But what is the point of it all? What is the reason we are all here alive and wondering, making mistakes, and trying to ruin every fucking thing we touch? Why the world is set to self-destruct? Can we all live in peace and harmony and mind our own fucking business without any major consequences and conflicts? Even beer makes more sense right now than the time or even the whole wide world. For fuck’s sakes! People don’t really need much of anything. We all just need to be more human. Even fucking Jimy Hendrix on my Spotify playlist makes more sense after some fucking sixty years later. I hate that these beautiful long Saturday nights with music, beer, and books and writing are never lasting long enough. They end. They end soon. Too soon. I can smell tomorrow in about a few hours when I wake up with a swollen face from cigarette smoking and beer drinking the night before. My whole experience of freedom and I do whatever fuck I want to do will be over. It all will become past. And tomorrow will be the future and the present and eventually the past. Even the small great experience in your life is worth more than having nothing. All these little moments are all worth it. They are worth living for, waiting for, creating even more of them in the future. I live my life for an experience. I spend my money, I don’t save as much as I probably should, but I know why I do all that. I am separating myself from the materialistic things to have more space for the spiritual experiences, to have a better life experience, to enjoy this short and dull fucking life as much as possible. I am not a baller. I am far from it. I am just a regular dude, trying to raise a family, become somebody, find myself, be a great father and a husband, trying to make all the right moves. I want to be a writer and write. I write as much as I can. I write as much as I have an opportunity to do so or as much as I make myself sit down and write. But I do. I try. I write. I want to make it happen for me, and I think that with time and perseverance, I will fucking make it one day, some fucking day, I surely will make it all happen for me just like I wanted, just like I planned. There will be a nice house in Florida near the beach, maybe with a pool, always nice weather, family near me, money in the bank, nothing to worry about, a few cars in the driveway for any occasion, and books all over the house. Why the fuck not?! For now, it is just a dream, just my imagination. Just a thought, food for thought, and fucking wish of mine, ok? Can a man have a dream? Can we all dream about something great for ourselves? I’d say, fuck yeh! Knock yourself up. Fuck yourself up. Whatever. Yet another bottle of beer is empty, and it is past midnight, and I know tomorrow I will be sad and tired and hungover, but I feel so alive tonight. I feel so inspired. I wrote all this shit in about half an hour. There is just so much of this shit in me tonight. I don’t want this moment to end. I don’t want this stream to end. I want to go on. I want this night to last forever, like a high school ball, a wedding night, a birthday night, or something else you don’t want ever to end. Fuck there is always so little time for everything. There is too much time for work, daily chores, misery, depression, problems, and payments, but so little time and opportunity to actually enjoy your fucking life. I want to live. I want to enjoy my life as I want it to, as I chose to enjoy it. Even if it means waking up with a hangover tomorrow. Even if it means fucking open another bottle of beer. I am going to, and I will stretch this night as long as I can. Fuck everything. How many times I will be free and thirty-three or four or five or fifty? We make our choices, and we should stand behind them. We should own our shit, good or bad. This is our life, and we should live it to our best potential. What is potential anyways? You figure it out. I am just writing. I think I have potential. We all do. Life will show how full of shit we are as time goes by. If six turns out to be nine, I don’t mind, nor does Jimy Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is really fucking on fire this night in my earbuds. I realize how much I’ve missed some great classic, fucking blues, rock music. I can’t have enough of it. The fucker was twenty-seven when he died, and all that music he created, played, and recorded is purely amazing. It all still sounds too fucking great if you listen today. None of it got old. None of it got irrelevant. It only gets better with time. Something tells me people don’t get better with time. Something tells me otherwise. Before people had this freedom to express their opinions worldwide on social media and elsewhere, there was just so little bullshit in the world in general. Life was so much better. Now everyone is walking around with their fucking phones checking shit out, posting this up, commenting, hating, shitting, crying, fucking around on the web, polluting everything with garbage and nonsense. And that’s what we’ve become. Walking zombies, living in our own little virtual universe shitting on each other. Even the great benefits of social media are so much suppressed now that they are almost inexistent. Life was better when all that bullshit took place in a small circle of friends or family behind a kitchen table. But the Ginnie is out now, so go fucking wonder where we go from here. I guess I know why I love sitting here in my basement until the deep of the night, listening to my vinyl collection, reading books, and drinking beer. It feels so much more organic and natural and so much real and meaningful. This is what I love, the music, the books, the writing, the boose, and the smokes. Men don’t need much to be happy, honestly. You would not be happy if you got it all. You will not be happy if you have nothing to your name. But you still have some chance if you get at least part of it. I think I’ve figured it out. I think I’ve got it. Another beer, another hour into the night. Another night of complete indulgence and what I like to call have fucking fun and joy. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. This is the saddest fucking reality ever. I wish I knew the day, the last day, I’d prepare myself better. I’ll be or maybe not be anything I am not today. I think I like being myself, or I think it’s cool for the most part. I am feeling pretty cool right now. It could be the beer, but I am feeling pretty fucking great right now. I’m a voodoo child, according to Jimi Hendrix. Damn, I’ve missed this great fucking music for such a long time! There is a shit ton of great fucking music to listen to. I’ve lost my focus, but I am finding my way out of that hole. Life is not all that bad. All in all, at least I get my chance at it. At least I am doing something, something good, something bad, something too much, and something too little, but it is my life. This is my scenario, my play, my fucking game, and I own it. And the wind whispers, Mary and I wrapping this mother fucker up. See ya later fuckers. Cheers to the good times and good and meaningful life. Let’s make this world a better place, even if it means drinking more beer, listening to more great music, and reading more of the Hemingway books. Jimi Hendrix lives forever.
Jobs are different kinds. There are full-time jobs, part-time, contract, contract-to-hire, passion projects, soul-crushing jobs, there are self-owned businesses, gig jobs, freelancing, and whatever, you name it. As many as there are problems in our lives, as many there must be jobs because all jobs should help solve the problems we have. We all need jobs. We all should get jobs. We spend our lives working jobs, making careers, busting our balls trying to make it, or making ends meet. We are always told that “It’s good that you have a job”, “It is good to be busy”, “Busy is good, right?” I guess it depends on what you are busy with and how much of it you really care about. Most of the time, we all hate our jobs, but we have our obligations, debt, family, kids, bills, loans, and we work and work and work until we die.
I am one of those “lucky privileged bastards” who finished college, and now I have had quite a few years of professional work experience behind my belt. I am considered middle-class or somewhere near that based on my salary, and I am supposedly the one “who made it.” I came to this country, and I’ve got my education, and I’ve got multiple jobs over time, and now I am who I am, a professional. I followed the traditional path to “normal life” by getting a four-year degree and working my many career jobs so I could be promoted over time and move from one position to a better one. Back in the day, that sounded like a great plan. Back in my early college days, that seemed like it was the only way to “make it.” I didn’t want to work at factories and construction sites all my life like most people that I knew did. I wanted to be in the office, working clean and safe jobs and getting promotions as time goes by. I guess now I’ve got what I wanted. As this became my life now, I started wondering, what the fuck did I really achieve, and why am I so fucking miserable all the time?
There are a shit ton of people out there who, with or without the proper education, made a tremendous success in life, whether it is building a business or creating a new product or service or new app or whatever. Most of them never got a proper education; most of them were college or high-school drop-outs. Most of the people you know or see hitting the road to work every day on the highway, are with an excellent education are just fucking office people who none of us will ever know or hear from or notice them amongst the crowd. They are the masses, the masses who followed the plan. It is not always bad to have a secure job and steady income and keep on “growing” and living a “normal” life. The problem is the cost that you pay for it. It is not the price of your salary. It is never just those fifty or one hundred thousand dollars in school loans that you’ve borrowed because you were led to believe that you are investing in your life, your dream, or your future. Sometimes it is true, but it is so fucking false in most cases. Once I get a decent job, I think that it will take me about a year or two to pay my debt off, and then I will be free and happily living my life in peace and comfort.
My current situation and some deep ‘philosophical’ thoughts
Sometimes you might find yourself thinking about something that you believe you are an expert of. Like myself, I am deep into my thoughts and they come to me one after another just like glasses of wine I am drinking, one after another, after another; and so into the night and so into my life. People are funny, thinking that they know everything. They like to share their bullshit with you, trying to convince you that whatever they say is the holy truth, the only right way. Usually, I just nod agreeably hoping to get the fuck out of there asap; to escape, avoid the entire situation, avoid everyone, abandon the human race. Sometimes you may feel like you just stuck there and you have to listen to their bullshit which is just simply driving you fucking insane. Why do I always have to be in those stupid situations, talking to the people I hate on topics I don’t give a shit about? Fuck all that, I think I don’t have to suffer anymore. Let somebody else waste their lives on that random bullshit. I am out. I don’t have a fucking minute to waste on any of your stupid problems. I just don’t care.
I am thinking a lot about my future. What is it out there for me? What the hell will I be doing a year from now, two years from now, five… Who knows? Nobody. But we all live and hope for ‘the Best’ and ‘the Best’ is always fucking busy somewhere else but just never by me. Sounds familiar? Ok, good. We are on the same page then. All my life I have been waiting for a miracle, like something unusual might happened to me because I am a special person, the selected one, the fucking best person in the world. But nothing extraordinary did ever happened. It’s been a rough ride for most of my life. Nothing was easy, nothing was free. There was no accidental lottery winning, no credible person solving all of my problems, no lucky charms, no good karma, and not even a bad one. Always with my back up against the wall, I often think, am I on the right path? Am I doing the right thing? Where in the hell will I be if I continue to go this way or that way or if I just remain standing here waiting? What is this all about? Am I somewhere near the place I wanted to be? I do believe though, that some of these questions will find their answers years from now, eventually. But now I will remain here in the dark, questioning and figuring shit out just like a real man should do.
