I was just thinking in the shower (because in this rocking life, I don’t need to shower afore noon).

Firstly, you’ll need this:

Secondly, this post may be the first REAL post here ever. Everything has been honest, but very little has been absolutely real (I will explain that below, grab the NoDoz…)

Here’s the thing, there is a part of me that feels like a huge fucking failure. I want to clean up loose ends at work. I want to be remembered for all of the hard work I did not for this misunderstanding. And, it is indeed a misunderstanding, not a relevant sign post in my impending psychosis. I am sure that several people feel that I have let them down. Perhaps I would too if the roles were reversed.

I think they see me as reckless, but I am not and have never really been reckless. In the drug years of youth, I always did far, far fewer than any of my peers. I picked and chose moments and never ingested anything unknowingly without caution. In the sex years of that same freefall of youth (OK, that’s not a past tense kind of thing, although damn if I ain’t getting any right now, shit), I mostly have exercised a little judgement there too, and acted mostly safely. To this day, I’ve never done anything universally freaky or fetishy; no costumes, no ball gags, no crowds, no pain, no tampering with orifices ideally left to their own natural state. (I have an ongoing argument with a friend on vanilla vs. freak. I swear I’m vanilla, he points out the context of the true vanilla. But, still and all, I have simple tastes.) And, financially, apart from a blip also fed by callow youth, I have lived largely debt free. I paid off student loans literally as soon as they possibly could be, saved a bit and bought a house when I was 31 or 32. After college, I’ve held jobs and done the “right” things, making career choices and developing skills. Stable and focused.

I mention all of this, because here’s the thing — I like to seem reckless. The ideas in my head, my politics, my beliefs, my “vision,” the shit I think is cool all lean toward radical. I don’t think the revolution needs to involve sado-masochistic destruction, however. You do need to rattle some cages and shake shit up to get new ideas moving. I just don’t think personally that you have to starve or explode to make changes or to ONLY, if only, just to START A GODDAMN DIALOGUE. Comedy is reckless, because you are saying shit out loud for effect that other people don’t think of or don’t want to say or whatever, but still want to hear. Writing is reckless for the same reasons. By the way, performing nude brings all of that shit over the top and beyond.)

But the recklessness of comedy and writing isn’t actually reckless. There’s no destruction or doom lingering, no total anarchy without caring. For fuck’s sake, if anything it’s a pussy way to revolt and not lose your benefits. Thinking is just a good idea, it’s not radical at all.

I thought that it was pretty widely apparent that writing and thinking and ironically, intellectually masturbating in a public forum was and is not REAL. Weblogging by it’s on the fly nature, by being temporal, by grabbing disparate links and ideas, amalgating little doodads and factoids can’t be REALLY REAL. The Internet is a virtual world. I am a virtual character made flesh (I hope) by my words, but the person typing this text has other real world, tangible characteristics, reponsibilities and context missing from this page. AND, by the very nature of writing versus living, those things will always fucking be missing from this page.

However, if I write properly and effectively my emotions are honest and my thoughts genuine. The frustrations I have described in regard to work are true, but they are not real. Emotions are not tangible things. They also are usually fleeting. Describing anger and frustration (and fucking humor) in prose does not equal action in the real world. Apart from Ernest Hemingway sucking on a rifle barrel most people and/or so-called artists aren’t looking to wallow in the pure idea-based, descriptive, emotional plane. I mean think about it, how much would life actually suck if every time you had a thought or an emotion you just snapped and acted right on it. Guess there’d be a lot fewer jobs and spouses and a lot of Hemingway-type messes to mop up alongside a whole lot of freaky naked sex in the streets.

I value honest expression, but I don’t confuse it with reality. If only someone else were smart enough to figure that out, we all wouldn’t be listening to me wax all philosophical right now.

There is I hope truth in everything I write or perform, even just a kernel, but it fucking ain’t real.