Oh God;12:32am

i feel like quitting. so close to the other times, too. not like the pills down my throat or gun to my forehead clutching the suicide note type of qutting, but i can see it getting pretty close. more like the, i just don’t want to do these things that i thought were going to be good in the long run, but after today, don’t seem to much of a good enough trade off.

and i know two years ain’t nothing. people have been doing this normal thing for their entire lives. and i know it’s supposed to be this hard. and i know it’s going to take a lot more to make it work. and i know, it might not ever work. and i know i might die without a wife, a kid, or any recognition of what i’ve done with my life. i know that. i knew that going into this. and i know i still tried. and i know there’s still more try left.

but seriously, dude, i don’t know if this is what you want me to do.

i got this tattoo on my forearm for people to read. “normal”. i got it in pasadena with erik. and christine was there, i think. we drove erik’s forerunner thing, i think. the tattoo artist placed it wrong on my forearm the first couple of times. and i felt weird telling him to place it right because, ya know, the dude with the needle on your flesh is someone you don’t want to piss off. but i had to get it right. because it was supposed to mean something.

i remember why i got it in the first place. i tell people it’s because cookie made me. but that’s not the truth. sure, the word came from a conversation we had a long time ago. when we were arguing as usual about how life should be lead. her with her boring, normal, regular, trudging, slow death kind of life, and me with my exciting, poor, broke ass, alpha, could die at any moment kind of life. we were both so adamant about which was was right, we never really saw the bigger picture of incorporating both. and how much courage and endurance that actually takes.

and at that time in my life, i was in a transition. i saw no more life ahead of me. just the same old adventures across the universe, with the same kinds of people, saying the same kinds of ethereal things, but in the grand scheme of things, was just a string of alpha to alpha, just theory to theory, nothing solid to found actual evolution on. perpetuating the same kind of dissident and bohemian that leads to stupid baby after stupid baby.

it wasn’t cookie. it was me who wanted to be normal. to get a drivers license. to get insurance. to cut my hair. to wear regular clothes. to rent an apartment. to find a nice, clean, traditional girl who i can marry and have intelligent kids with, so we can save up and get a house and a dog and a cat and a mortgage. so we can go to the mall on the weekends and shop for stuff we didn’t really need. to go to sleep in the same bed with the same woman who i might actually love. and do it for the rest of my life. because in comparison, as i was getting older, that seemed like the more satisfying thing to do.

so i got the tattoo. i cut my hair. i got a job.

two years later, i’m feeling like i went the wrong way. maybe i should’ve stuck it out with Art. maybe i could’ve written the great american novel by now. maybe i could’ve been on TV. who knows. if i would’ve stuck it out with that, i could be somewhere else, other than trapped in a sauna of an apartment, working part time at a non-profit, and teaching ballroom dance on the side. maybe i could’ve gotten all the things i ever wanted, if i would’ve stuck it out with the way i believed life should be lead.

i got information on my tax returns today. i’m not getting anything back. i owe money left and right to people and agencies. my car is about to break down. and i’m no where near where i thought i’d be at this point in my experiment of normal. and i know it’s only been two years.

but this is where i gotta ask you one more time. please, God, please tell me what to do. please, for the love of you, please, please tell me what i am supposed to be doing. i am your servant and your soldier, but i can’t do what i was born to do unless i get some tiny little hint. because i might be going in the wrong direction right now. and you know me, i’m going to keep going until i fall unconcious. and by the end, i might’ve done something you didn’t want me to do.

give me something, anything, some sign, a gust of wind, a billboard that clearly states what i’m supposed to be doing, before it gets too late.

i want to do what it is you want me to do. i just wish i knew what it was.

i think i’m gonna take a walk right now. hey, if you feel like giving me a sign, i’ll be walking down colorado. maybe all the way to PCC. we’ll see how the knee holds up. but if you feel like it, if you just have an inkling of giving me some sort of sign, i’ll be listening. i’ll be listening very, very, very,  carefully tonight.

sorry for the weakness. you know it doesn’t happen a lot.

thanks for listening, buddy. i love you.