In the great American tradition of confessing our sins publically in a futile attempt at absolution by delusionary honesty, I am writing this while eating overpriced fish and chips and drinking a couple pints at a fake upscale Irish pub (the real one a block away doesn't have wireless, which is probable part of what makes it real,) and charging it my credit card while unemployed and down to my hundred bucks. And now I can fool myself into not feeling guilty for the act. Let alone, that my shrink will probably be miffed when I show up for my appointment mildly tipsy.

I was about to write about learning my lessons, and all that. But that would be faceitious of me to do so, really. The fact that I only seem to clue into the possibility of a lesson only through desperation, belies that. Then to top it off, I am bored so senseless by my lack of a centralizing activity, I have too much time to add elaborate gothic flourishes to my desperation. I've tried to hold onto the idea that job first, philosophy second, but it's harder than I thought. As long as I keep up this damnable persecution complex, which is undoubtedly the paradise of the narcissist, and consider that this world belongs to "them," I've learned just about nothing. Even though the world doesn't belong to "them" either, because the world will go on without me or them, in the end, hasn't really sunk in. If it did, I would be doing more writing than in this blog. I doubt I will know I've learned anything until I create enough work to fill an author's portfolio.

This week has been loaded with the kind of dichotomy that if I could really capture in my writings, I would finally feel life born in the words I place on screen and paper. I ran into someone,I barely knew years ago while exploring my philosophy through role-playing, who had been wanting to thank me for playing with such a sense of independence and fearlessness, that I had helped him decide to finally come out of the closet and live true to himself, overall. I was bowled over by the idea that I helped someone, when all my active attempts to "advise" other people online turned into a exhortation on my false individualism, and I looked back on those times as the reason why I stopped trying to play the self-effacing sage. But then only days later, my Grand Canyonesque blind spot for social dynamics resulted in picking the most personally favorable choice in a double message, and angering The Man whom cursed me sincerely for the first time ever. What I dream about doing, I can do, as long as I don't dream about doing it. Somewhere in here, I am totally missing the Dharma.

Usually, I beat myself up about the fact I still act with the motivations of the over-indulged and manipulative child that I was, but there really may be truth in looking backward. My life has always been safe, secure in a broadband of being because I never had to work hard to gain what I wanted, and I could always dodge what I didn't want using my disabilities and emotional difficulties. In other words, I've never had to really sacrifice anything, by doing just enough to pass, or fall to failure when I've reached the point where I would clearly have to lose to gain something more. (I do have to say, for the first time, for all my mockery of religion, I see how a wrathful higher power could be useful as a motivator, as the unmovable authority. But since God, or whomever one could quiver before in majesty, is still subjective, he/she/it can be believed to be appeasable.) I've never really had to do anything I didn't want to do, and I've been to justify this intellectually. Maybe this is the real compromise position that has been unravelling, since sooner or later, we all have to do what we don't want to do, and not just economically or physically. That's not to say I should give up all my individuality and swim with the stream, but I will still have to work without, if I want to later gain within. The Buddha came back to teach mankind that you can't end the trap of suffering, unless you really suffer and give yourself over to that suffering to gain understanding of it. It makes sense in the face of how I felt for a long time now that I couldn't really write what I wanted, and what would be meaningful, until I figured out what my life lacked. That was the reason I left college to "find myself" in the "real world." I can practice compassion, since I can't say that what I believe, even if mired in my own possessiveness, hasn't affected the life of anyone, and make them reach for more, but I'm still in my own way. And I still can't turn to God, Country, and King to force me over that edge. But I can't turn to myself either.

I shouldn't bitch. But this does suck.