Within and Without

A little tangent that happened while writing 'On Tour' stuff about Millennials and with Clerks 2 on in the background. Doesn't fit anywhere, just thinking out load.


Generation Xer’s seem to have this… contentedness about life not going splendidly. I love movies like Clerks, how they so succinctly capture the giant shrug that is a typical life. It makes me feel less alone. But it is not comforting, agitating more than anything. There are so many people like me, thinking like me… who are able to be content and still with the typical shitty life. They can find the beauty in it, the humor in it. I suppose On Tour is my attempt to do the same. It is frustrating trying to find the words. As frustrating as trying to find my place in life. As frustrating as trying to find contentment. I am the typical whatever living the typical whatever life… and feels so wrong, so indescribably out of place for me. On one side, my ego wants to say this is because I am more ‘special’, my life should have more meaning. My… well, I don’t know what side it is. Cynical? Practical? I struggle to differentiate the two… Anyways, this other side says I am the same as everyone else, no less special. I need to keep my ego in check. I am proof to myself that I am just another loser failure, through no fault but my own. I am where I deserve to be, an architect of my own failure. Thinking that does nothing to improve my outlook. I can beat my ego down, but it still simmers in the back of my head. It asks ‘Why’. It doesn’t let my pragmatic cynic be content with the life it has. It asks ‘Why’. And that question agitates me. It itches under the surface, and I cannot find anything to scratch. Nothing relieves it. I dream of all the plethora of things I haven’t done, the people I am not, thinking that one of them is the skin I am meant to be in. I try on all the cheap ones I can find, and none fit. The itch only gets worse. There are so many I want to try, some too expensive, so many not my size, and the vast majority out of reach. I  can see them through a window. I am within and without, simultaneously enchanted and exhausted by the variety of life. Please forgive the intentional misquote. It is the most succinct way I can describe my feelings, by using the genius of another who felt the exact same way but from a different context. Ce la vie. How I always feel, so connected yet so off. Within and without, lying horizontally across parallel universes...