leave for the city, well, count me out

Bec says The Format's new album isn't as good as Interventions and Lullabies. I was supposed to get it from her tonight, but suddenly, I'm not all that anxious to. Suddenly, I actually think I might wait until it hits stores. Or whatever other avenues might bring it my way. I find it akin to the feeling I had that I didn't want to watch the sequels to The Matrix, because I didn't want to ruin the first one for myself.

I've been reading Devlin's blog lately, and just finished replying to an email he wrote me. Whether or not my readers know, he's in Japan. He's apparently having the time of his life. Having never seen him blogging before, it was strange, but something became clear; whether or not I'm familiar with his writing, the change of scenery's made him happier, or at least, given him something to be excited about. I was just telling him that it seems we're, if on separate sides of the planet, in similar boats; both of us have come upon circumstances that could completely change our futures, at least, how we see them.

I find that exhilarating. In two weeks, school will begin, Signius will be done, and I could be on a completely different road than I was a couple months ago. Or, I could do what I always do, and brilliantly fail.

The difference, this time, is that I don't view failure as an option. It's not like the last couple of times, where my thinking was more to the tune of, "well, if I fail, I'll deal with it and move on." Well, I've tried that one, and it hasn't worked. Plain and simple, I must excel, if I want anything to change. And that's a pretty silly "if," really.

Friday night, I was retarded, and decided to go to a party in honor of yet another friend of mine who's headed off to the military. (I say retarded because I only had about an eight-hour buffer zone between getting out of work and having to be back the next morning.) Granted, he's not as close as certain others, but I think it's served as a distressing reminder that as we age, people are going to leave. A scenario that recently came up in conversation was one where, in five years, some of us are going to come back from college, and find our hometowns empty. Well, not empty, but you know. Everyone we once held dear will be gone. Somewhere else, out of town, even dead, who knows? Besides wishing people the best, there's really nothing else one can do.

And, the other night, when Dave referred to dropping out of school as "pulling a Danny," I feel like a good bit of motivation fell into my lap. I look back, and I see an unglorious past. I look forward, and I see the support structure that cradled me through that past going threadbare. The more I think about making my life happen, the more I realize that I don't need that support structure. I don't need to be in the presence of people whose accomplishments amount to as little as mine; and I don't need to feel intimidated around people working towards a masters or a doctorate.

The mark I leave on this world has nothing to do with how I compare with my peers, and much more to do with what I bring to the table, and how I do it.

(For the purposes of disambiguation, the aforementioned support structure has nothing to do with my friends, and people I otherwise hold close to me. More like the abstract sense of feeling more comfortable in the company of fellow slackers and dropouts. Which is gross, I know, but true.)

Okay, so, it's May. Why is it absolutely butt freezing outside? Aside from the facts that I'm wearing a microfiber shirt, not moving, and smoking, of course.

For the record, this weekend has been monstrously sleep-deprived. So I think I might retire or something along those lines.

(DB) out.