Another Birthday

Life is catching up with me. I've run as fast as I can for as long as I can, but dammit if life isn't a stronger finisher in this race. The reality is that I'm 30, married, working at something that I feel made to do, surrounded by love, and yet for some reason…not satisfied.

That's the word I realized. Satisfied. It's not that I'm not happy. I am. It's just that none of this seems to be enough for me. That's why I keep pouring myself into more and more of anything that I can do. Are they distractions or opportunities? I don’t know anymore.

I write and advertise for programs that I don't watch and demographics that I am not a part of. I take money for jobs that seem small and feel guilty that I'm ripping off my employers. I work my ass of for jobs that I believe in and sometimes it crushes me when inferior work gets chosen and sometimes it elates me when I actually accomplish something through hard work and not just the ability to be good enough.

It feels like I've simply been good enough for most of the time, lately at least. This doesn't mean that my work is defined by mediocrity, simply that sometimes I feel like I sleepwalk through the creative process rather than transcend it.

I want more than anything to be the kind of guy that transcends. Right now, I can be honest with myself. I am not.

I sleep enough these days, but I'm never rested. I don't have nightmares. Nor are my dreams that intense or crazy. They are simply busy. Even in my sleep I feel like I'm punching the clock. Just like waking hours spent this way drain your body, sleep like this seems to drain your soul.

Another birthday approaches and I don’t feel old because of a number attached to my body. I feel old because I still remember everything that came before like it was yesterday. I remember it that way because nothing has really changed.

I'm six years old and my book is the boogeyman. I believe in it and so it frightens me.

I'm thirteen years old and I feel so alone, as if no one understands me, and as if I could simply disappear and nobody would miss me.

I'm eighteen years old and I'm being told to figure out who I am and what I want to be. And I still don't know.

I'm twenty four and every once in a while when I walk to work in the morning, I realize just how many people live in New York, and just how tall the buildings are. And it makes me feel invisible.

I'm thirty years old and I fight the boogeyman, feeling so alone, unaware of how to accomplish what I want or even what it is I want because, really, how can you find meaning in your life when you can't even find your reflection in the mirror.