A real one this time.
I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting and tummling and starting trouble. I'm tired of losing my soul. I'm tired of wondering whether I was bad for my audience today. I'm just tired in every way. And I question whether I'm not starting to cause more harm than good.
I simply don't want to do this anymore. Like the job at the liquidation store, it was promised to be something more than it really was. I didn't think it would be taping up broken bags of cat litter all the time. So I just finally got tired and quit. No hard feelings.
I have nothing left. It's all gone. I started this road trip with a tank of gas and a backseat full of provisions and it's all gone. There is nothing left. Nothing. And the road trip was never in service to myself. That's the added dash of... je ne sais quoi... that makes the experience all the more... something...ly... bothersome. To me.
Nasty, mean-spirited "social commentary" is no substitute for humor. And I fear that I've lost what humor I had. Sticking a shiv in someone's belly is not quite the same thing as bringing joy into someone's life, now is it? One's soul is enriched by one of them, impoverished by the other. You know that it's time to go when you can no longer deliver on your promise to make an audience laugh. I'm just too angry and too dark and too mean right now. I really can't be of any use in this state. One comes to know when it's time to fix oneself. "If the cabin depressurizes, put on your own mask first."
I told you that 2009 is the year that good things happen for me. And it is. I have not used any drugs in two years, I have not smoked cigarettes in three weeks, and I drink no more than two drinks in an evening now. I take a brisk, three-mile walk each morning and I feel like a new man. Now that my body is getting in shape, maybe I'll go see someone about working on this mess of a mind of mine.
I'll be around if anyone wants me. I'm easy to find. But absent some explicit, unmistakable invitation to keep up this line of work, I don't see myself continuing. It's a dead-end job. No offense to anyone in my audience, but let's be honest: It's like working at the liquidation store; I'm going broke working for you. I have gone broke: financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. There is not a single subsystem that works right now.
I went on a date with a charming young person the other day. He likes 'em older and decrepit and with shingles on their face. Don't ask me why.
He has nothing but bright, shining things in his future. All good things coming down the pike for him. He asked what the license plate on my car was. "It is such a very long story..."
And I realized that he cannot benefit by knowing me.
It is very difficult to feel good about yourself when you have to concede that others cannot benefit by knowing you. "This person can only lose by knowing me. Huh."
Though it's no one's fault, my good-faith prosecution of this line of work has served only to alienate me further from the society with which I sought to connect. The more I reach, the further everything recedes from grasp.
It's like everything over the past six years has been exactly backwards.
I do not wish to go backwards anymore. And so I do not wish to continue this.
I will post technical things related to my jurisdiction at the USov site: http://unitedsov.blogspot.com/
