There was a period of my life, beginning instantly after I left Chicago, where I completely lost all confidence in myself. I couldn't believe how incorrect I had been in the past, believing that I had greatness in me, that I was doing something valuable by ignoring the advice of my peers and family.
I took a job as a Sous Chef on a ranch in rural Colorado because I was persuased by my "mentor" an ex crack addict with a copy of Be Here Now. for 20 bucks an hour. I intended to invest the money I earned at that job into some sort of sweat equity arrangement on the property my "mentor" owned.
The job sucked ass. My mentor saw substantial value in me and planned to extract all of it. I was deeply alone, even more alone than I always already am and confronted a feeling I know maybe better than any feeling. "Everyone around you thinks your a wierd worthless moron, and the fact you think otherwise is pathetic and foolish."
Well, I didn't like it, crashed out, abandoned my plan and ended up in Albuquerque New Mexico Again, the "Land of Entrapment".As I told my close friend with whom I shared an adolesence: "It's our Staten Island." I looked again for shit jobs. Jobs full of drunk, stupid, (retarded even) failures of people with no direction and no value. The transition from living in Chicago where so many of my dreams had come true in a single year, where I could engage in challenging conversation that I craved my entire life. To applying to the same jobs I applied for when I dropped out of college at 19, was a fresh kind of personal masochistic humiliation. After all that, I thought. And I'm still in fucking high school. Watching peers and contemporaries soar to the top of social ladders, courting beautiful women, earning large sums of money, planning to raise a family. I came to the conclusion that I was, like Marlon Brando and Billy Jack, a Born Loser. My father, just like in high school, felt this was the perfect moment to remind me how lazy I was, how I should be in some institution training for a real job.
I had considered suicide in high school as well, of course I was never brave enough to try. In this moment I looked into the void of an anxious future and realized. There is nothing left for me on this earth. It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Well, I have never loved at all. I have only ever loved things. Music and Movies. Which have never let me down, humiliated me, confused me, or abandoned me. If I believed in god anymore, I would ask him why things had to be this way. Now I know it's just the way it is, doesn't matter how you feel, no such thing as deserve. I write my pain in static HTML because I would never want to tell another living soul. To watch them sneer, to hear them repeat what I already repeat to myself in my head: "It's a sucker attack, you'll never get anywhere in life feeling like that. LAugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone."
Here I am alone. Not suicidal. I could never be suicidal again. My confidence today is in shambles. But just like Howard Roark said. "it only goes down to a certain point." The great thing is, if I quote Ayn Rand to anyone I know - Not like I know anyone anymore - they'll label me crazy. A zealot. But I'm telling you, she's the reason I've been able to claw myself out of the darkest moments I've experienced time and time again in an unrelenting and marvelously unnattractive fashion. Her and Elon Musk.
I find myself halway through Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk, the 2nd biography of his I've read, after the Walter Isaacson tome. The story is so absolutely insane it makes me question every decision I've ever made and everything I've ever valued. It's overwhelming to the point that it even awakens my dormant feelings of worthlesness, my inability to withstand meaningful connection with other human beings, and most critically, my sucker attacks. My insecurity. I meet new people in Austin TX and I crave conversation about books and films, but usually whether it's real or not my brain begins to send the signal - you are a burden to this person. Your desire for connection is pathetic and weak, and they can smell it. Only extremely undesirable people have to try like this to make friends. Many bad feelings awaken in moments like this and my mind is flooded with the pain I tried so desperately to escape in my teenage years, making me feel like nothing I ever do will change the fact that I'm a born loser. It is a very painful cycle that I cannot express to other people. I wish very much for it to stop.
but I am not giving up. I am here on a mission. I have unfinished business on this planet. I have untapped potential that empirically outweighs all external and internal doubts about my competance. I know this to be true. It is an unshakeable truth that permeates all doubt and presses down on me leaving me with only the option to persevere and never compromise my values no matter what, It's my way or the highway, If you don't like me, blow me.
I'm not here to be good enough. I have zero interest in being the best "me" I can be. No. I'm the fucking man. I'm a walking genius undiscovered in his time. I know, because I've been around the world, talked to every kind of person and have realized just how special I am.
"I always knew one day I'd be a star. Since I was a kid I had this feeling in my heart. Sometimes I wonder am I really this special or... Is there something that you ain't been telling me lord?" - Joey Bada$$
unemployed and intoxicated,
che