72. sick and tired (caution, potty mouth)

"You need to bust out, man," my friend Willie is always telling me. And he's right. I'm always frustrated at how small my life is but it's only that way because I've taken so little of it on. Life is out there for those who want to live it but I, like 99 percent of the rest of the "civilized" world, want to play it safe, to be smart about things, to take life as it comes.

Well right now in this chair, in this blog, in this house on this island, I'm sick and fucking tired of it. God did not create a safe world so all of our efforts to make it so, while noble, are misguided. Life is a huge, fucking hunk of raw meat. But all we do is grab little mouth-sized pieces, fry them up, and process them into little nuggets that we eat with various dipping sauces. I want to tear into the hide with my bare hands. I want to stick my face into the mass of it and rip bloody pieces out with my incisors.

See here's the thing. I know God has gifted me with certain abilities. I also know that these abilities are not being used to their fullest extent. I know that God has made me for more than this safe fucking life that I'm living right now. I'm dying from the inside out because I'm not living the live I was created (designed by God) to live. The devil is smart. He doesn't tempt me with drugs or casual sex or any of the obvious vises. He tempts me with security, with complacency - lulling me into a useless (though polite) stupor.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to become a heroin addict or some kind of Hugh Hefner playboy. I'm Randall Ajimine, not Evel Knievel or Jesse James. But I'm not Billy Graham or Dr. James Dobson either.

I don't know why or how or...why, but I just don't think I've been living the life that God has planned for me. And I'm sick and fucking tired of it. I waste my time with the most meaningless coping mechanisms and then wonder why I'm so dissatisfied. Back to the meat metaphor, I'm just taking these small, processed bites and it's making me ill. To steal a quote from Dead Poet's Society, (who stole it from Thoreau), "I want to suck out all the fucking marrow of life" (emphasis mine, of course).

I want to live life more deliberately - to chart a course instead of being blown by the wind, to be proactive rather than reactive, to risk rather than refrain. Again, I don't think God has given me a larger-than-life kind of personality but I know it's bigger and bolder than it is right now, because sometimes I think I have all the backbone of a sea cucumber (or any other invertebrate you care to picture).

...BUT...

But these are words on a computer screen and life is on the other side of the door. I write because I find strength in these words, in the worlds they cast and create. I think, maybe it's this strength that draws people to this blog (over 115 views this week so far). But away from the keyboard, outside that door, I'm not as bold of a man. All of the brash bravado I wrote about above? I wish I could live up to it all, or even a part of it.

But strange as it might seem, I don't take my writing with me. Loudon Wainwright has a great song called "Father/Daughter Dialogue." It's about a daughter who is frustrated with her songwriting father for writing all of these idyllic songs about family while reality falls far short. His response is thus:

darling daughter can't you see
the guy singing the songs ain't me
he's someone people wish I was
what I can't do this dude does

And that's how it is with my writing. When I'm writing I can say that I want to take on the world and when I'm writing it, I feel like I can make it happen. But away from my keyboard, without a pen in hand: I stutter, I stumble, I have no words to say. Here, I'm brave and tan and ten feet tall. Out there, I'm a slightly overweight, 33yo virgin who's never had a girlfriend - someone who happens to have a blog somewhere out there in cyberspace. Not exactly the kind of thing that gets you play with the women at Indigo or the Feng Shui Lounge. I mean yes, I play in a band (a very good one, by the way) but playing in a rock band in Hawaii is like being a championship tennis player in a bowling league. You know you can kick their ass, but not on their turf.

So how does this end? What do I do now?

I post this blog. Close my laptop. And do the best I can.

I'm reaching for my mouse now...