Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Four)

I've felt tired all day. I just woke up from a nap, so who knows when I'll be going to bed, but I'm up now and I suppose that's all that matters.

I picked up my paycheque from work and deposited it. It wasn't as much as I'd hoped I was going to make. Then again, I won't actually make a real, honest-to-goodness full two weeks of pay on one cheque until the end of March. The first cheque reflects the end of prorogation, and the next two will reflect this week off. Welcome to adulthood, self. Never enough money to pay for being alive. If this is just the beginning of REAL money problems, I might just disappear to a shack in the woods after all.

I'm only half-serious. It's starting to dwell on me how expensive my goals and ambitions are. I want to do a lot of things, and a lot of things take money. I'm also living alone for the first time, so I can't chop every living expense into halves or thirds like I used to. I suppose I should feel lucky to even have a job, but even to the jobless that's a somewhat hollow thing to be thankful for. I'm so THANKFUL I can be just another cog in our society's huge capitalist machine! Don't need anything more! Happy and livin' the dream!

I need something more. No matter what I ever do, it won't be enough to satisfy me. These days that fact excites me way more often than it upsets me. It makes me think I can try new things constantly. I just don't want to find myself sitting at a desk pumping out text ten years from now because I'm still waiting for life to REALLY ACTUALLY start. The only things between me and a classic, full-fledged, stereotypical adult version of me are marriage, children and a house. If I end up with any of those things, I don't want to look back at the way I am today and think, oh, what a silly ass I was. I had no idea what responsibilities really were. I do. I have a responsibility to myself to feel happy, and it may be selfish in the eyes of parents and the betrothed and the property owners but it's the most important responsibility I have. If I don't tend to myself, what's the point?

Sometimes I think that I'm just another product of the "me" generation, people of an age brought up to think that they can change the world and inherit it completely without making any mistakes. A boy fed too many compliments in grade school on his ability to do well, to answer the questions, to write the right words, play the right notes and finish all the assignments and texts. I rarely hit the honour roll in high school, typically averaging out to marks of 78 or 79 each semester - just enough to not be recognized for superior work. Enough to get by. Slightly above average, but not enough to notice. I was the only one out of 13 or so OAC honour students to go to college instead of university.

In college, it was the same thing. Although I ended up with an award for the highest marks in the program, I never felt as though I had the artistic ability to create something that merited the praise. Not like a guy like Matt, who never finished his stuff on time but produced strikingly original graphic design every time and still does to this day. That was his niche, not mine. When I decided to go back to school, it was a decision based on equal parts of wanting to avoid the real world. Average though I was in high school, I always did well in English, and that trend continued. I got passionate about writing and put on shows and wrote and helped put together a magazine. The things I cared about might have been small but I really and truly cared about them.

Why am I going through this little historical recap? Part of my ground-up nature, I guess. Start with a level field and get to the point. But I was never the kid who took stuff apart to figure out how it worked. I would just try to make a facsimile, and it never turned out as good as the thing I was trying to replicate. I do, however, recognize a truth when I see it. There's a truth there, and it means something.

I'm still trying to come up with my own original thing. Not really because it's what I think I should do, but because I won't be complete without it. There's an adage that no matter how good a person is at something, there will always be someone better. Sometimes I think that I try to be half-good at EVERYTHING rather than really great at one thing, as if it's an equation that balances out somehow. But math, once a strong point, no longer is. I cycle through strong points and let them become weaknesses. I do a thing and end up thinking it's not enough.

Like this job, I guess.

I know I should calm down and try to gain some perspective. I can live a full life doing many things as long as I remember to take pleasure in them and try not to beat myself up too much over things I'll never be or be good at. There are an almost infinite number of those things. I will never operate the super hadron collider, or travel into outer space, or swim across Lake Ontario, or build a farm house with my bare hands. But maybe I can write some songs. I may not ever play the piano as well as Mozart, but maybe I can push the keys in a certain way at a given time and give one, two, three people chills. I may not ever own a publishing firm or accept a Giller prize, but maybe I can write a few poems, or a short story that someone reads and feels good about because it's a truth they couldn't understand before. And maybe I can put enough money away, not to do everything I want, but a few of the things that would mean a lot to me. There are things I want to see and do. There are things I want to feel, when I'm ready to feel them. If I can't see or do or feel them right now, that's okay. But I will find ways to have the experiences I want to have.

It amazes me that life doesn't drive more people fully mad, rather than simply mad in little, individualistic ways. There is no greater pressure to undertake. There are many definitions in place for what a life should and should not look like. The rest is a separation by desire and circumstance, and a fulfillment by means and ambition.

Today I bought a mixer.