The clutter, and the gloom are familiar this time thankfully. It also helps that I am not blackout drunk, memories and locations are much easier to store when one is sober(ish). I am awake, alive, and mostly sober in my own bed in the coffin I call my apartment, and things are going fairly well for a change. Considering that I've had 3 months of unmitigated disasters, fairly well is a relative term, but nothing is on fire, no one has punched me in the face, I haven't (yet) sexted my boss, and no one has texted me that they want me to die in a fire.With all these things going for me, I figure it is time to get moving, fortune favors the brave after all. These good times can't and won't last, because that's just not how the world works. Never get too high up the greasy pole, there are a whole horde of people who would like nothing better than to see you fall off of it onto your ass. They might not actively participate in attempting to bring you down, but they sure as fuck will be happy when you fall. Make no mistake, you will fall. It is just what we do, we stumble, we stagger, and we fall. It is called life, and if you're not, on occasion, failing at it then you aren't trying hard enough. Again, there will be (always) a number of those carbon based life forms that we call humans rooting for you to fail, and will gloat when you do. Some will actively try to facilitate your failure without understanding that if they just left you to your own devices, you'd probably fail all on your own, and probably in more spectacular fashion. Failure is an option, always has been and always will be. Michael Jordan failed, Albert Einstein failed, all of us fail, it's just the scope that makes the difference, that and the stage upon which you do it.
Those ignorant men who have been taught most violent ways that want you to fail, lack the fundamental understanding that by wishing you to fail they make it more unlikely. Left to your own devices you'll fail but in your own time. When people are rooting for you to fail, well fuck them, you start to try not to fail (which could be considered succeeding), and therefore they have prolonged the shameful joy they want to revel in when you fail. The odds are still against you, and you're a proper idiot, so failure is still waiting in the wings off stage to make its grand appearance in the passion play you call your life, but when faced with opposition, you start to engage and pay attention. Few things are more unwelcome than a person who has been challenged than their undivided attention. Whilst there are more of them than there are of you, and odds are still odds and can't exactly be evened out, or beaten on a regular basis, sometimes the solo performer, the lead actor, the virtuoso, can win (or at least prolong losing for a long time) because they have fewer weak points. A group of people is exactly that a group they generally aren't anything special. Sure they have their strengths (in numbers for one), collectively they are probably smarter than you, sleep less than you do, and can be in more than one place at once, but they aren't gods. They aren't all-knowing, all-seeing beings that know your every move before you make it. They are humans, using the term loosely, and they are also encumbered with their weaknesses. Each one of them have separate,distinct weaknesses that can be exploited. They also have the collective weakness that they are only as strong as their weakest member, and whichever one of them that is, the others can't really do much about screwing that one's courage up to the sticking point. They just have to try to gloss over that indivudual weakness, and hope other people don't notice. Wagons may be easier to circle when there is a group of them, but there was only one Alamo.
Life isn't a stroll through the park, and those groups of people who want you to fail are here to make sure of that. Life is, for the most part, a zero sum game. The sooner you realize that, the better off you will be. One man's loss is another man's gain, most of the time it is just that simple. The loss/gain is usually proportional, and evens out on the scale of life, but sometimes the fellow losing doesn't see it that way, and wanders off down a path that leads to even further loss. It is the equivalent of throwing good money after bad in a casino, sometimes they just have better cards, and doubling your bet is just a way to lose more than you lost in the first place. Knowing when to hold them, and when to fold them is an extremely difficult thing to do, we all want to play the hand out to the end both in the hopes that it gets better (it has to get better right?), and quitting just goes against our nature. Mama may have raised a fool, but she didn't raise a quitter, or so you like to tell yourself. Sometimes that is a lesson that is hard to learn, harder than trying to catch a falling, wind-blown leaf on your way through the park, but it is a lesson that must be learned. All lessons don't have to be learned the hard way.
Once outside the physical clutter and metaphysical gloom, you might find a bright side, some summer sun of York may banish the winter of your discontent if you are lucky. It isn't a bad chance to take, and eventually you should take it. Barricading yourself behind walls of solitude isn't the healthiest choice in the long run, and you are in this for the long run. After all, it is the only run you've got. Exile is something that happens to almost of us at some point in life, things change, people change (I used to think they didn't now...), and eventually we change in response. Today's salad is tomorrow's steak, and it is important for you (and us all) to realize that. The slings and arrows you are suffering today, are just as likely to be accolades, and apologies tomorrow. If you happen to be the forgiving type, maybe all of it will even out (back to our zero sum game), and maybe if you are lucky you will be able to rely on your own good intentions.
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