Can't Get A Date

Often times when you say this is it, I might as well go, the counter is, you are still making the world a better place. While the thought is sincere, and the affection true enough, the ultimate question is: are your actions really making the world a better place? It's a tough one.

For instance, an off-hand observation about my inability to get a date in this town is now a full-fledged television series. On VH1. Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Since the show has nothing to do with me materially, or otherwise, I can take both sides.

For my friends doing the show, I am happy. I expect the show will do quite well. The audience will laugh. LIfe without laughter isn't much of a life. Creation, the act of, in and of itself, is rewarding. Success in and of itself is an tonic, an accomplishment not shared by all. The show is better than average.

On the other hand, entertainment is entertainment. The show will have little lasting impact on people's lives. One would be stretching to say even that minority that experiences the show will be better off. By the real criticism has to be closer to home. Is this all that I can say I have done? Like the scene in Pirandello where the hero is madly scrambling to find just exactly the good he had created, the works of lasting value -- only to find the sheet a still blank paper. Should I be working in television in the first place? Have I no other abiding skills that will have a more lasting impact on this planet?

It is the bleak answers to those questions that led to this publication in the first place.

It Isn't The End of The World

I don't think my suicide would be the end of the world. Rarely does anyone pull the plug who is deeply connected. Those few who do usually are staring down the barrel of a world gone wrong, of being part and parcel of the creation of exactly what they were trying to defeat.

My suicide will be a much quieter affair. Simply that the chance to rebuild this world in my image has passed. Once noted then, it would be my duty to move on. To let others take a stab at it with the resources I am consuming.

Why do people my age pull the plug so much? It's genetically programmed in, I am sure of it. If no one really cares whether you are here or not, well, you notice it after a while.

Can't Today

Yesterday I worked 17 hours with Tim, who I like and consider a friend. So I didn't have time for suicide, much less very many thoughts. I did notice a few times paths I had not taken, and can only say from this vantage point, I should have. I can make that statement frequently, at times it is quite clear that I have take the worst possible path for myself. So, the edict could be, straighten out or go.

This is not to say others are not guilty. A wild incompetence permeated the conditions of work yesterday. Yet those who haven't the skill set to notice their failings continue forward, when perhaps they had best examine their own situations with a bit more alacrity.

Suicide is Everywhere

As banal an event as reading a book involves suicide. My chosen diversion, to help stave off that day, was The Best American Sports Writing 2005. Quickly two stories involved suicides. A golf outing was an annual memorial, now 20 years strong, to a college immolation. Followed by back to back steroid stories - Ken Caminiti follows steroids to crack, and yet another college age student hoes the steriod rage road to isolation and suicide.

Must I be bombarded in my banality by these tropes of failure? Must my diversions hark on the improbable but possible? Not that I care, but these suicides have so much more going for them than me. Their stories are successes gone awry. How quickly would they have succomned in my position: a life consisting only of failures? Complete isolation? A loveless singular existence? A suicide when married, with children is the most incredibly selfish act of all. For myself, this would be quite a self-less act. A saving of the planet of resouces. Or else, it would be a quiet act that no one cares about.

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The Three Uns

It's not like I wish to be overly pessimistic. Rather, I feel compelled to be as neutral as possible in my observations and judgments. As age creeps, your body creaks, I just had a second where I lost my vision there, and you have to adjust.

Taking a look at my life, rather than painting the best possible picture, it is much more rational to merely take what has happened in the past and parlay it forward as the future. Now some people like my life, or think, on the surface, that it would be a decent life, an upgrade from theirs certainly. If possession of a few dollars, an adequate sense of humor, and a keen intelligence is what it takes, then take my life. Those finer qualities of life, be it power or perfection or fulfillment of duty are more motivating to me. Perhaps this entire problem is exacerbated by having nothing to do. Hedonism is not enough. Not that I could care less, but a bit more than that is necessary sometimes to keep living.

Hence, when I look at my past I see my future: unwanted, unnecessary (now more than ever) and I can't even say the last one.

This Is How It Is

How are you?"
"Well, I can sum it up in three words: unwanted, unnecessary, and unloved"


People casually ask you how you are. Mostly you don't answer, or you just go fine. But every so often, be it whatever the weakness is, and you know it's a weakness, or maybe that little bile that bubbles up in your heart everytime your fate hits you (you know that takes a day off you life at the end, except probably you won't even get there), or maybe it's one of your rare friends and you feel they ought to know -- so you say how you really are.

Now saying how you are really doesn't go over well. Some hack out that uncomfortable laugh, waiting for the punch line. Sensitive women mist up, people you don't know you well treat it as a conversation ending - (how many countless times on TV do they ask the neighbors "I can't believe it. She seemed so happy-normal-typical - I never saw it coming"). You have the sense not to tell the people who would freak, and that's that. Modern life is isolating, and those that are yanking on the chain that pulls the plug, well, we tend to be isolated, or, to repeat those three words of my answer: unwanted, unnecessary, and oh so unloved.