I'm not exactly sure what clicks internally, whether its physical or chemical or whether its just ingrained into your DNA that at some point in your life you must go to school, get a job, grow up, have kids, become a grandparent, retire, buy a vacation house and then die bequeathing all of the shit you've accumulated during your tenure to your children and grandchildren just so they can continue the monotonous cycle once again. We're like lab rats running in a wheel, and though we know if we keep running on that wheel eventually the wheel will wear out and we'll want to strangle ourselves from boredom, we continue to run on that same cyclical path just because we've got nothing better to do or somehow don't know any better.
I don't mean to be depressing, Lord knows if I was it would already be mentioned as my Facebook status, it's just something that has been in my mind a lot more lately. What happened to childhood dreams? Why do we have to settle for this? Who made these rules? More importantly, where can I find the son-of-a-bitch who did I'd like to give him/her a piece of my mind.
Now before anyone goes off and starts to worry that there's some sort of existential or mid-mid-life crisis at hand, simmer the fuck down. Now give me a minute to turn off The Cure, bandage up my wrists, and wipe the black eyeliner out from under my tear soaked eyelids. The reason I bring this up isn't because it depresses me; rather the contrary, it MOTIVATES me. What better reason is there to live your life than to break that pre-determined plaster shell of an existence? That's half the reason I got the hell out of the mid-west, just so I didn't fall into line and become what I've been resisting my entire life.
Still, the difficult part isn't realizing that you're part of some program, the hard part is freeing yourself from it, after all isn't that really what The Matrix is about? It's not really a movie about freeing yourself from an ACTUAL computer program, its about breaking free from the chains that keep you in line. Its about taking charge, disappointing others (when necessary), casting off the doubters and living your life as you would want to, not as others would like you to. That's kind of what brings me to this, Day 5 of the rant/blog/diatribe. When I was growing up I always wanted to be a writer, not any specific kind of writer (I was much too young for specificities), just a writer. Somehow along the long long way, I stumbled on to the fact that I was pretty good at math, not great, just pretty good. Unfortunately/Fortunately though, being pretty good at something is usually enough to excel at it. The world seems content for mediocrity, so if you're juuuust a little bit better or have juuuust a little more personality than another person you'll be just fine. It reminds me of something I heard lately, "It's better to fail at something you love to do, rather than succeed at something you don't," now you better believe that will be the ONLY motivational/inspirational piece I ever type on this blog so you better savor it. Swathe it over you, let its musky aromas fill your nostrils....
Now its not all about just being a little bit better than other people at something, obviously, its also about recognizing opportunities and seizing them; hence, the move way out west (way out west), to take a job in engineering. Now while I'm not saying I'm smarter, more qualified, or more personable than anyone, that's just funny thinking about it, I'm saying there's a lot of people who would have balked at the opportunity to leave everything and everyone you know behind and pursue a new life in a very different place.
That all sounds great, Midwest kid moves out west, becomes an engineer, buys a nice car, nice house, marries his LONG time girlfriend, and lives happily ever after. Again, that just doesn't seem like the thing I want to do, it now seems like the easy thing to do. It's like the ties that bind follow you wherever you go and trick you into thinking you're bucking the system when all that really happened is you're falling right in line, maybe just in a different place.
So what's the point I'm trying to make? Why can't we have those childhood dreams? What is it that prevents us from ever attaining these things? I think the answer is simply ourselves. What else could it be? There must be an instinct passed on from generation to generation that causes people to think that they should just settle down and be happy with what they have. Although I'll never be a famous writer, I can still write in my free time. Hell, this is even technically considered writing...right? I guess all I'm trying to convey is that I'm currently struggling trying to understand the appeal of the system rather than the freedom of living one's life.
Maybe this was more meant to start a conversation or maybe it was one of those rhetorical conversations that sometimes you have in your head. I'm not entirely sure, frankly it sounds like the stoned ramblings of a fourteen year old girl more than anything. Oh well, I got my 5th post out of the way, however verbose it may have turned out. As I've said multiple times I don't fully understand this media, hence my attempt at butchering it.
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