I think a fairly accurate measure of how boring your life is, is how much of it you spend reading into meaningless details to try to add some sort of excitement. It's like the fanatics of old that played records backwards looking for Satanic messages. Surely, there must be something there!! Since I have once again found myself in the precarious situation of being crushing on someone (God help us all), I have read novels into every little bat of an eyelid he has made in the past month. Every single word he's unwittingly uttered has been dissected back and forth and interpreted in roughly ten million different ways either to my advantage or to my extreme disadvantage depending on my mood. A simple "How you doing, Mia?" can be both "aww, he cares how I'm doing. He loves me. Surely, this will be a union like no other" and "He makes small chit chat because he hates me and wants me to die". Which of the aforementioned is closer to the truth is anyone's guess.
On a sidenote, I have some bad news for my waistline: Easter is upon us. In honor of that, me and Sylvia drove out to the local Piggly Wiggly's to buy ourselves an easter egg. I became spoiled by choice at the selection and spent a good hour choosing an egg. I ended up going with the overall appearence of both the egg itself, but more importantly the little baby chicken doll on top of it. I ended up choosing one who was wearing a crooked tophat and red horn rimmed glasses. I figured he was so nerdy that no one else would buy him, and therefore, he would be very happy and grateful that I bought him and I imagine he's quite proud of himself sitting in my cupboard downstairs. This thought process has now led me to the conclusion that there might be something deeply wrong with me.
So between the torture of having my tooth ripped out through my wallet and what seem like neverending car repairs, I've come to realize that I can scarcely afford to draw my next breath. In light of this, I have broken down and started looking for a job. I've applied for a couple of McJobs here and there, and even some "real" jobs because I'm delusional. Reviewing both my resume and my own personal bank of skills, I've come to realize that there are precious few things that I am qualified or experienced to do. Not that I'm at all above lying on a job application or anything, just between you and me. I think I might attach the following picture to my job applications and start applying at dairy farms. One can never have enough milk, as the good doctor ordered.
*sigh* In the words of a good friend, I've got 257,547 problems but a bitch ain't one.
Well, that's it. The world is officially against me now. This morning I was rather brave. Or braver than your average 5 year old anyway, and actually volunterally went to see a dentist. My dentist was rather displeased with my reluctance to come visit him, and read me the riot act for several minutes before actually getting to work. In retrospect, allowing him to become so worked up before he began taking sharp instruments to my pearly whites (Ok... so they're more like pearly off-whites..sort of) was perhaps not my best idea to date.
You see, the backstory to this pleasant morning was that whilst engaged in a fist fight with some sailors down by the docks last week, I managed to break a tooth. Dr. Giggles, being a man of invention and progress decided that rather than fixing the old tooth... he would merely rip it out of my bleeding gums with a metal hook. Aww, bless his little cotton socks.
Surely another shall replace it soon, as I am still tooth-wise very much a child and haven't had my extra set of back teeth grow in yet.
The knowledge that I will soon be frolicking in the sun with a brand new tooth that is sure to become as attached to me as my old one did nothing to ease the pain and seperation angst I felt as Dr. Kevorkian handled me in a way that would have made your average heavy machinery weep.
Now, when I say pain, I mean that in a strictly metaphorical, melodramatic sense. The truth is, I felt no pain at all. I'd had 4 shots of local anaesthetic in various corners of my mouth, paralyzing my face and making my cheeks look like flapping pizza dough. I am quite confident this deformation is permanent. What little aesthetics I had going for me (and lets face it... I am rather poor in prettiness) have now been erased, leaving me with a bullethole the size of a billy goat in my jaw as a souvenir and permanently blood stained teeth.
Ironically enough, my horoscope tells me I'll be feeling amorous this week. Well that just fuckin' figures, doesn't it?!?
Mmmm, kiss me baby....
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I've been wondering a lot lately about what it really means to be happy. How does one become happy? I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that I want to do with my life, and failing that I cannot possibly get paid great money for doing absolutely nothing, I think I’ve narrowed it down to a certain field that I care to work within. But the funny thing is, I can’t really see myself being happy doing "a job". Not really happy. The kind of goofy happy that makes life seem effortless and worthwhile and the 5th flat tire of the month is a hilarious mishap and not a reason to go hang yourself.
It's an embarrassing thing to admit, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I've always envisioned myself as "a star". And I don't mean a rockstar (necessarily), but just someone who is better than everyone else at what they do and has the unchallenged adoration of the world for it. I'll go out on a limb here and say that this is probably not an uncommon fantasy to carry around in the back of your mind somewhere. What is the true measure of success, if not the adoration/envy of others? Can you really be successful if no one gives a shit? If a tree falls down in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, did it make a sound? Catching my drift? Ok.
But when you think about, how many people have that kind of adoration? I mean granted, the number is probably quite high but when you put it next to the number of other people who aren't stars in their own right, it begins to look pretty low. There's a reason why they call it Average Joe. But how happy is Average Joe? Is anyone really, truly content with being mediocre? Is everyone truly resigned to the average life or are we all secretly hoping to break away and becoming extraordinary?
Happiness is allegedly not about having what you want, but wanting what you have. In other words, the happy might very well be the masters of self deprivation. I don’t understand how working as a bank clerk in a small town for 40 years gives anyone true fulfillment. Do these people, these invisible wheels of society, really feel happy or do they just not think about it? It's probably better not to, I'll give you that. But is happiness really only the one begotten child of a poor imagination? I tried to raise a similar issue with people I know from my church awhile back, and I got some spiel about money not lasting beyond the grave and how temporal blessings don't really mean anything for that reason and how family, children and the gospel are the true blessings in this life. And that's all very well, but that touches on what I said before, about the happy being masters of self deprivation. Or to quote Sinead O'Connor, "I do not want what I haven’t got".
The thing is, I consciously KNOW all of these things. Happiness is a state of mind, seek fulfillment from within and not from the outside world, the only person whose respect you truly need is yourself, material things are not the true measure of success.... And I could light up a bong, twist myself into some complicated yoga pose and tell myself this all the doo da day, but I don't think it would change anything in the end. To me, these are just little catchphrases that I can recite to help myself accept the fact that I’ll never be a "star". They're self-deprivation crutches. Average Joe's spiritual training wheels.
Now were I to feel compelled to reach some sort of halfassed conclusion on this, I guess the key is to accept what you've got and learn to love it. But is acceptance really the same as surrender? But if you don't surrender, who the hell are you fighting with? And is it worth it in the end? Isn't fame and adoration at the end of the day something that happens outside of your own being and person and not something tangible that you really feel? Does anyone feel famous and adored on that level, even if they are? Don't they just feel hounded and ridiculed, but just as ordinary as everyone else? How many questions have I asked in a row now? Do you think it's time to stop now? So do I. Or do I?
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