I think I went about
this blog thing the wrong way. See; I started out delving too deep into my puny
little brain. I feel sometimes writing is like doing stand-up. As a comic, you
can't go strait up on stage and start saying crazy shit from the get go. You
gotta ease into it by letting the audience get to know you with your opening
material.
So let me talk a bit about myself. First of
all I wasn't just raised on TV I was raised by TV, that and my overactive
imagination. While my mother was chronically depressed and my father has always
been ... Well I call it "emotionally checked out" as in physically
he's right there but emotionally he's a million miles away. He's not a bad guy,
we just never really talked. As a kid I played by myself and day dreamt A LOT.
Day dreaming was my defence mechanism for the crushing depression of my parents
shitty disposition. But I was determined to not become one of them.
No wait that's not right, determined is not
the right word, I wasn't determined to be different from my parents it just
wasn't me, that's never been me. I have my fathers eyes an skin, my mothers
height an hair but that's where the similarities end. Everything else is
mine. So I on the other hand wanted to
be funny, likable, friendly, interesting, witty and I figured everyone else
would want to be all these things too. Now I'm not saying I am all that funny,
interesting, likable or witty but hey I'm trying so give me a break. One thing
I am though is friendly. That's the one thing where if you want it, you can
have it.
In primary school I
was fairly well liked and popular because of my clowning , but in the classroom
I fell into that same pattern of day dreaming. Somehow I managed to make it to
high school without learning to read and write. Which was a huge sense of embarrassment
for me. Thankfully my inability to read paralleled nicely with the Richmond
High School policy of don't ask don't tell. So I hid my shame like a survivor
of incest, except that I was raped by my
own short attention span. My only salvation was my sense of humour an sports.
By the time I left school (kicked out with no
year10 certificate) I was drinking and doing drugs everyday and pretty much
fell off the radar with anyone who was making something of themselves because I
felt like a pathetic dumb shit that knew and did nothing. At some point my
stupidity started to really get to me, so I decided to teach myself everything
I wanted to know through the internet. Everything I know now I owe to the net,
countless scraps of useless information from historical events and figures,
science and the universe, crazy documentaries and the ideas of so many people
whom I would have never been exposed to. I'm extremely fortunate to be living
in this age of information, we all are!
Up until 200 or so years ago people could go
their whole lives and there would have been absolutely no new inventions that
could have any affect on them at all. But today it seems every few weeks
something new and cool comes out that changes the game completely from GPS and
iphone apps that can translate foreign languages to 12volt vibrating vaginas
that can... No wait, never mind.
What I'm trying to say is that before the
internet came around and you had a question, you'd have to go to a library. If
you couldn't find a book with the answer or you lived too far away from a city,
then you were fucked. Now, it literally takes five seconds to look up anything
you can think of and get the general consensus or as close to the right answer
as you can get. Fuck I love it!
I think everything
we're interested in makes us who we are. Unless you're one of those people who
might look cool but have the personality of a piece of dry wall. If you're not
passionate about anything other than the way you look then your a boring person,
whatever shitty style you're rocking I'm cool with it as long as that's who you
really are and not some ploy to take everyone's focus off your lame
personality. You don't fool me with that peacock strategy.
Getting back to
myself, I'd like to report that my mother got on anti-depressants and I don't
know anyone who medication has helped more than her an Magic Johnson. It was a
radical change she's actually a happy person now. My father is still a shadow
and does anything he can to avoid eye contact, but one out of two ain't bad. I
still drink on the weekend and smoke weed every couple of days, but I've never
really been addicted hardcore on anything. I think the drugs I took were for
the same reason every addict takes drugs - to get your mind off your shitty
life. But getting off drugs for me was fairly easy, I just stopped hating my
life and so didn't feel like getting fucked up everyday anymore.
The best thing for
me is that I've found what I want to do, I want to be a writer, I know weird
right? Weird that some chump that left school as a semi illiterate kid who had
never read a book now wants to write one. Having a goal has given me a real sense
of purpose, one I've been lacking my hole life. I know it's not changing the
world or curing cancer but it's enough to make me happy. On that note, I'll
leave you with this tip (cue the inspirational music while you're reading it)
Change feels bad at the beginning. "I just got dumped by my girlfriend,
I'm moving , I'm going to a new school, I'm starting a new job, this is
horrible!" Change always feels scary. Because its unknown, And we're
scared of the unknown. That's what freaks us out. We build our world around the
known. This is my job, this is my house, this is my life. When this gets
interrupted it scares the shit out of us, but it's usually for the best . When
you think about the lives where there is no change, they're the lives most
unlived. Like the guy that's been a postal carrier for sixty one years and
lives in the house he grew up in. That's the opposite of change. Change is
growth. That's how you measure your life, it's the rings in your tree. Sure it
can be bad temporarily, you're out of a job, your home, your relationship. But
eventually you don't think - I with I
still worked there or lived there or was still with her. If you look in the
rearviewmirror , you'll realize you're happier and better for that experience.
I'm talking about real change, not a hair cut or new pair of shoes. But getting
out of your comfort zone an into the world.
I've wasted too much
of my life being afraid of change. I guess it's one more trait I got from my
parents.... or maybe that fear is mine and mine alone. You can't blame
everything you don't like about yourself on someone else. You're not where you
come from, you're who ever the fuck you wanna be.
So that's me, nice
to meet you.
