I don’t really know how to put into words all that I am thinking about right now, but sometimes my most introspective moments come in the short time it takes me to drive home from work. A simple glimpse into a future event or possibility can be rolled around quickly in my head and just as quickly forgotten or pushed aside, if it is particularly unpleasant. So, how is today different than other days? Maybe it just took a couple of days to sink in. I watched a DVD of a Henry Rollins spoken word/talking show on Friday called Up For It. He is a minor hero of mine in that he lives his life with few apologies and just as few regrets. He’s a guy who embodied quite a bit of my youthful angst/anger and put it into lyric that I could identify with in my teenage years. And to a degree I’ve mellowed in the music I listen to and purchase, but the Rollins Band is one of these scream/growl at the top of you lungs bands in which you hope not to pop an artery whilst listening/rocking out. His spoken word projects have grown up as he has and perhaps he’s mellowed out a bit as well. He recognizes himself as “the ageing alternative icon” that may be getting soft in the head. During the Up For It viewing on Friday he talked about growing older and the position you come to be in when you hit the age of 40. Talked quite a bit about not fitting a particular demographic except to buy more life insurance. Talked about the belief that you must become a man and retire the boy. Retiring your dreams to be a drone.

Wham!!! Right between the eyes. Totally blindsided me there.

Have I unwittingly become a cog in the machine of the status quo? I get up in the morning, go to work, come home, have dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. Tuesday, get up in the morning, go to work…. you get the idea. I get in the rut. And I also get out of the rut. I know that I have something special to offer the world, or so I’ve been told since I was a child, and I suppose other parents told their kids that too. When do you realize that you are “special” just like everyone else? And you go to the same bullshit job that everyone else goes to. Sure the buildings may be different, and the tasks performed at each will vary, but when did you, when did I, sacrifice being “different” and “special” to a savings account, equity, stability, benefits and a retirement package. Not that I thought that I was gonna/am going to change the world, but I had/have dreams and/or illusions of what may or might have been.
What is it that is holding me back? What is it that forces me to get up in the morning and go to work? Is it fear of a guy named Vito that is gonna come and break my legs cuz I didn’t pay my credit card bill on time? Or is it because I just want to earn money to buy stuff I really don’t need (even though I am being marketed to/ or I fit the demographic) so I’ll feel better about myself? Or is it that I am truly limited in my capacity to do anything else and have resigned myself to this thing I call a job. Maybe it’s pressure to be a stable guy and that will somehow woo a woman into marriage, and thus please my parents and I’ll be able to shed the stigma of “single guy getting older times running out when am I gonna have grandkids and you can come to the couples dinner at church and not feel like a third wheel but you are welcome to tag along cuz there may be some other nice single girls divorced recovery codependent gonna find a guy and cling onto him like there is no tomorrow” and thus live a happy life.
I so want to be THAT guy!!!

Actually what probably keeps me going to my job is the knowledge that it does mean something to someone where I work. I (in theory) am vital to the operation of the company. Not that I cannot be replaced, but I know that I would be missed if I didn’t show up. And not that the place would fall apart without me, but I have invested part of me into the job. So in that regard, maybe I have given up on my dreams of airways infamy. Maybe I have given up the dream of just quitting a job cuz I’m young and educated and I could just pick up and leave. I guess responsibility can be an anchor. And it is not always bad to be responsible, despite what Henry Rollins says. I wouldn’t want to have a family of my own and not put food on the table and a roof over their heads. I would sacrifice personal dreams to for the betterment of my wife and children (if I had said wife/children). I certainly wouldn’t want them to end up on Springer or Maury, or some other “blame it on parents/ society screwed me over so screw you and your lesbian psychic republican or whatever I don’t want to take responsibility for” type show. I do have real responsibilities and cares that matter.
So perhaps I’ll never be as cool or rebellious or lonely as Hank, but then again, I really never was “cool”.

Where does that leave me then? Going to my job as a faceless cog in the Matrix? Sacrificing my “special” dreams for socio-economic stability? I suppose for now, yeah. I sure don’t want it to take 10 years for me to figure out that I’ve wasted my time and life.

np:Indigenous - Red House

- posted by TundraBoy @ 4:14 PM