2009-02-15

Pre Mid-life Personality Crisis

To post or not to post?

That's the question I've been posing myself these past few days.

There's too much nonsense going on for me to keep up with.

I'm unsure where my writing style is going for now. One day I want to go all vulgar and medieval on everyone and the next I'm pondering the decline of Western art. One moment I'm into writing bits of nothing, the next my ambitions want me to save civilization. But I have no cape. Or leotards for that matter.

Then I shrug my shoulders, grab a piece of fruit and watch curling. What seems so painfully obvious to me is not to the case to the regressive semi-conscious organism breathing heavily next to me.

This blog is many things to many people from many places. To the Eskimo it's a taste of urban intellectualism gone mad. To mothers everywhere it's a reminder of a boy they once knew. Maybe even of eroticism? To the homeless person it's proof that something does exist without knowing, seeing or feeling it. To the Magyars it's the smell of anger.

True story. One day in high school, a substitute took over our geography class. Naturally, we paid no attention to the man who looked like Boris from Rocky and Bullwinkle - I don't 'zaggerate. As we performed act after act after verbal vile act, the vociferous villain lost his mind. A fellow rabble rouser finally asked, "Sir, what's that smell?" To which the good teacher, decked in a loud red shirt and belt boasting a buckle with a red ruby - answered, "It's the smell of anger!"

We laughed. Oh , Lord did we laugh.

He followed this sequence with a question of his own. "Which junior high are you guys from?" "St.Paul's," someone replied. A sudden moment of quiet realization overcame him. "Yes. I heard about you guys."

Yes. I was what was termed a "troublesome" student. Nothing evil or violent; just a restless kid with an over-active imagination. In fact, the gang, though terrible students (except for a couple of guys), were quite appreciated by teachers "off school time." We'd spend quite a bit of time talking about physics, art and music, politics and history and host of other subjects we had a strong grasp on. It frustrated teachers because they believed we should have been not just good students but great ones.

I don't know why we were never able to get our act together. Still, as a whole, the gang turned out to be pretty successful. They became engineers, financial analysts and foreign services officers. Me? Let's just say I'm still a work in progress. But we won't get into that. I still haven't figured out how my mind functions exactly.

A modern axiom of business - indeed anything - is to find you niche. I hear this about blogging a lot. Do you get the feeling things are over-niched?

Which I guess is a good thing. There's something for everyone. Of course, it can lead to a personality crisis. Or pointless posts.

It's claimed that punk began with the New York Dolls:

8 comments:

  1. "I still haven't figured out how my mind functions exactly." Well, neither have I. Nor have I met anyone who has ... ;-)

    Nice post!

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  2. Anonymous2/16/2009

    Commentator what do you consider mid-life? Are you contemplating living to 120? I will give up long before 156.

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  3. Not sure what I consider "mid-life." It's a moving target. It's all relative.

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  4. Anonymous2/16/2009

    OK, put this way I have never reached mid-life, since every morning a new page opens up and life is renewed. As long as I will have projects, I will not have reached mid-life. I will most likely die before.

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  5. I think you hit middle age when you switched to blogger. Good thing too.

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  6. Paul, you mean you never wanted to slick your hair back in a pony tail, go new age, buy a motorcycle, get a tattoo and go vegan in your 50s?

    GB, yeah but what is it for gorillas?

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  7. Anonymous2/16/2009

    Nopes.

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  8. Anonymous2/19/2009

    you mean you never wanted to slick your hair back in a pony tail, go new age, buy a motorcycle, get a tattoo

    Oh, I wanted so many times. One of my dreams has always been to grab both a good book and a huge motorcycle, start from Canada and go southward until I reach the penguins and watch them dancing. I’ve always fantasized about this dance of the penguins, I’ve even dreamt of it. I kept telling myself: "Oh the penguins, they are waiting and feeling so lonely, bored and sad without me. Why let them wait so long?" I am not kidding. I know it sounds crazy. I really wanted to go dance with them.

    I mean, for a long time I’ve been a king of escapism, a maestro of mid-life crisis. Only at the end of my fifties I found out that I had crossed that mid-life line (I will in fact die at 120) and I am very well with it. I am happy with what I have, so I probably will never go watch that penguin dance.

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Mysterious and anonymous comments as well as those laced with cyanide and ad hominen attacks will be deleted. Thank you for your attention, chumps.