Oh 'tis it Such a Crime to be Content?

I've recently been accused of being "boring". Well, I guess the more "fun" days of the blog were the days when I was a near suicidal mess.

I find that or a solid 99% of my life I was discontent, uncomfortable, bitchy, miserable, and enormously self-centered to boot. This is all fine and good for going to college and creating a career. It was even better for starting this blog and writing a book. It wasn't so great for my health and general well-being. However, I find my creative energies are, well, stifled a bit now that I am happy. Many of you out there seem to be bothered by this. Soooooooo sorry I'm no longer a grumpy-pants.

I used to spend all my moments pondering why I'm pissed. My father was tremendously encouraging in my disillusionment and upset as a child.

Here's a standard scenario, a schoolyard chum perhaps pushed me over in a game of tag (the dick).

"Dad, I'm pissed."
"That's fine. If you don't wake up pissed, there's something wrong. So why are you pissed?"

At that point, it didn't matter why I was pissed. My father had been proud of me for my notion, even though it was a negative one. One that's generally unhealthy for me.

Cut to ten years later. I sat in an Embassy Suites near the airport, drunk and alone. Stressed out due to the riotous assholes I occasionally worked with. This particular day they'd pulled a real doozy on me - eliminated my marketing budget. I called my father, the only person I know that takes managerial and strategic responsibility as seriously as I do.

"Dad, I'm so stressed I can hardly breathe. My heart races and I bite my tongue."
"Why do you feel that way?"

(Notice the "why" is now the first part of the sentence).

I explained whatever budgetary story had gone on that day.

Then my father said to me, "You can't go on like that. You can't get upset by those things. You're going to turn out like me. If I hadn't quit my job, I was going to die."

Wow, what a change of tune. A lot had changed for the fellow in ten to fifteen years.

There's nothing like your father, your hero, telling you he's going to die by the force of the same weapon you're wielding into your own gut.

Though still, it took me years after that to finally become happy, content, and hopefully not on the track to dying so young. This time of utter unbelievable enjoyment of my life is really, right about now.

When I started writing this blog, I was an masterfully angry person. I knew how to harness my anger into entertainment, which many readers enjoyed. I've changed a great deal. My anger came from a number of places:

1. Having my huge ego shit upon by the whole city of Los Angeles
2. Being unaware of what my possible contribution to the world could be
3. Lacking a companion in my life whom I felt would always be there (part of my lovely afflication, "only child syndrome")

These have all been alleviated, by conscious alterations in my own psychology.

Sure, there are things about the world that upset me. Capitalism, consumer credit, ethnocentrism, religion's effect on society, those types of issues that I can't just wave a wand and fix. But god dammit, do I have some fucking ideas for them. Look for more political and economic related blogs in the future.

So, my apologies all around, for not being to mock my own sadness. For I no longer have much of it.