When a problem comes along, you must...

I make bad decisions. I'm extremely good at it really, it's a special kind of skill. Over the past few years I've been really working towards making better bad decisions. You know, the kind of bad decisions that really don't hurt because while the shit you learn from them may be hard, they change your life in a good way. I've done a lot of things in a fairly short life. I don't regret much and I get better with age but the things I do all bring me somewhere closer to who I wanted to be when I was twelve. Not that I want to be exactly that person my twelve year old self envisioned me as, but the basics are slowly getting covered. Life is never going to turn out exactly as you envision. Life is living and its ugly and beautiful at exactly the same times and places. You move so quickly at times, towards things, wants, desires, fantasies, that you forget to just live. The only expectations that truly, honestly matter are, your own. Maybe the more you live, the less you care what anyone else thinks about how and on the rare occasion you do, happen to have, a single fuck to give for what another living person thinks, of you, or anything else. At the end of that fucking roller coaster of fear and foolishness, you are still standing with yourself and if you're lucky, a few really good friends. So even then, who really matters?


So I make these decisions to just do the shit people say not to, and I make these choices based on what feels right. Then, I live these ridiculous decisions out until they're over and the choices were clearly, unmistakably wrong sometimes and then, some of those times, I try something completely different but just as bad if not worse than the previous. It's like this revolving experiment in rebellion. From what? From who? For why? Oh, who the hell cares. Eventually, you start wanting to make better choices, you begin to bring it back to the basics. I didn't want much when I was a kid, I mean unless you count escaping and never coming back. As you grow the fuck up, you realize where you are might not be so bad. Home is a four letter word that isn't so horrible when  you figure out what it means. I still spend plenty of time wondering about wandering, but I've really begun to realize what I have, despite my worst decisions, is pretty damned good.


With these discoveries the person I am is on track with the person I wanted to be, and suddenly I'm making decisions that may not be so bad. The shit is scary, fucking terrifying, but exciting in a whole new way.It's as though somehow you have a clue what the hell you're doing and even if you don't, you're prepared, you can handle whatever comes, because you've been training for the worst but you're finally ready for shit to go right. The strangest thing happens, people start telling you your decisions might possibly be rational, logical even. There are people I've met along the way who I'm certain never thought I'd get too far. Perhaps to them I haven't made it very far at all. The beauty is, they have no idea where I've been and they may never see where I end up, but I'm glad they were part of it. Life is long, no matter how short, and it's built for mistakes and it supports its own adventures and its ours to do what we want with. Some of us want more and others want less. I'd like to think no one wants to be miserable and no one looks for disaster with any real hope of it happening, but what I actually think, is that plenty of people call that living and possibly for a while, even I did. There's more to life than work but you must work hard to live, to really live. Isn't that some shit right there.

There are people who actually spend their lives working to have more than they could ever need or use and they work so hard for this that they lose. They lose the time to do the little things in life, like pick up the phone for an old friend or play tag with a kid, or just simply say hello to a stranger and possibly make a new friend. We all miss out on these opportunities from time to time for various reasons but I find lately those little good decisions coupled with the lessons of those moderately larger bad ones, are starting to make one pretty good life for me. No two people ever live the same exact way, or experience even the same moments the same way. The world is filled with adventures in living and everyone is doing it differently even if it looks the same.