Blog of Billy

Probably my biggest fear, one that I really hate talking about, is that I am entirely too far into my story, the plot is set, and I will die without fulfilling some measure of my potential, disappointing those who put faith in me: that I would leave the world no great lineage that followed, no great invention that benefited, and no great example that elevated. It's on days and especially nights where I am concerned about what I am doing as a person and as the person that I want to be when the prospect of even growing another day older terrifies me in ways that turn my stomach and make me resent the happy couple next to the piano and the old man next to them who sings Frank Sinatra songs. I really don't want to become someone that leads a meaningless life in the Capra-esque sense that if I were never to have been, the world would be functionally the same. I know that I have had some kind of impact in each of the conversations I have ever had, and I take great joy in that. That joy, paradoxically, does not quell this fear, but just reminds me that I fear at all. The ultimate concern is that I am measuring myself against a yardstick borne of my imagination, and one against which I will always be measured wanting.

The crazy part comes in that I am simultaneously afraid that I will have some great impact that will turn out to be negative. I certainly don't want to become an unwitting Ghengis Khan, or even Robert Oppenheimer. On days like that, I take great comfort in the notion that I will have an impact in the world that will die out like ripples instead of a tsunami. It may be a coping mechanism, but it feels like a real enough emotion to where I have had conversation at length about it with the likes of Mike and Novelist Dave. Tonight I realized that the heretofore quite adequate comfort that a life of mediocrity would give me is insufficient to overcome the fear of aging. It's almost as though mediocrity is a choice, and I demand my options be open. Stupid linear time.

The problem with turning one's life around is that it denies that one was capable of perfection. How can I have a Christ complex if I've already sinned? This is probably the primary reason why I go reluctantly into change, half-heartedly into games, aggressively into groups of my peers, and as a child before the seats of power, no matter how merciful or mild.

Oh, and I'm mad at Dillard's too, but that's transient.

Whatever. I'll calm down tomorrow.

It was a very good year
for city girls
who lived up the stair
with all that perfumed hair
and it came undone
when I was twenty-one.