extremes

What's the point of writing this if none of you comment?

I've been over this countless times in this blog, but it's been a while since I ranted about the lack of comments so I guess I was overdue.

But seriously: Why is everyone else around me so chickenshit?

Why does everyone cling to the sure-fire thing? Remember what it was like to take risk? Remember how great you felt when you threw all caution to the wind and followed your heart?

Nowadays, people smother their dreams like stillborn children. It's safer to be in secure relationships and dead-end jobs than to actually go out on a limb and try something new. It's preferable for people to bury their heads in the sand like so many ostriches hiding away from the big, bad world.

I feel like I'm the only one out here giving it a shot. I know that I can't possibly be alone in my contempt for the safe path. And yet, I see no support, I meet no like-minded souls along the way-- they all gave up and decided they were going to stay in that fabled middle ground, that grey area of body and mind where everything freezes and nothing progresses.

Because everyone around me is so middle-of-the-road, it automatically casts me as a man of extremes. But I'm not. I don't see the world in black-and-white terms, despite what people who claim to know me well have to say.

I have been in the grey area, the middle ground, and it sucks. It's a prison. It's spiritual death. My soul is restless, and I wish that I was mundane and "normal". I wish I was better at kissing ass and being cuddly than I am at being provocative and obnoxious... but I was not born with that ability.

Even this job I hold, the one that I claim I am just doing for the money: I know nothing about this field of work. That's a huge risk to take, to throw yourself into a whole new world with no real compass or guide. There is no reassurance, there is no guarantee that it will work for me, and yet here I am.

I must be an idiot, or a madman, or a fool, because obviously everyone else thinks so. Everyone else looks at me like I'm a lunatic because I refuse to throw in the towel. They probably think, "Poor kid, so much to prove..." but the only thing I have to prove is that all of you are cowards.

Yes, I said it. Cowards.

Not that I'm any braver. It's just that I am sick and tired of being left out to dry by people who want to live vicariously through me. Fuck you if you can't walk the walk with me or go the full distance with me at your side. Do I inspire that much bad faith?

I guess so.

Go ahead, live your numb lives, wrap that suffocating cocoon around yourself ever so tight, and shut out the world, shut out the pain, anesthesize yourself to reality and its complications... I'm not having any of it.

I'll be here, ranting and raving as usual.