Theatrical Muse Reboot - #65 - What in your life are you most dissatisfied with and why?
There are probably a lot of things I'm dissatisfied with in my life, if I really sit down to think about it. It might seem strange. I mean, people look at me from over there and they wonder, what the hell does this guy want for? He's a rock star, he has a dream job, he has an amazing house, he's rolling in dough and bitches. He can have whatever he want whenever he wants it. And I suppose at least on the material level that's more or less true. I don't want for much. I do have a lot of money, by almost anyone's standards. I am definitely lucky enough to be in a position in my life where if I want something, I just go out and buy it. No waiting, no hesitation, just, "oh look, my truck finally gave up the ghost and it's going to cost eight thousand dollars to duct-tape it together for the next six months. This seems ridiculous, I'm buying a new truck." And then I go and I buy the truck and I don't have to sit there bothering to haggle over the details of the cost or what packages I do or don't want. I just go and pick it up. I know that a lot of people would like to be in this place financially, and there's definitely something to be said for being so well-off that worrying about where my next meal is coming from is so far off of the horizon that it's probably fair to say I'm not even familiar with the feeling. It is an experience I've never really had, and honestly it's not an experience I'm exactly leaping out of my skin to go through. I doubt anyone really likes sitting around starving with their thumbs up their asses. But maybe I'm being presumptuous.
Anyway, just because there's a lot of good things going on in my life and I feel like I can't even start a topic about what sucks without acknowledging those good things, there are in fact some things I'm not satisfied with. Some of those things can't be helped, because they're also things I consider perks. Isn't that strange? Half of me loves the travel I do for my job. I love seeing new places and experiencing new cultures and learning about their history. But half of me is very territorial and hates leaving Venice Beach. Every time we go on tour, things get a little out of hand in the hometown field, as it were. I always have to come back and bust my ass for a few weeks or months to get back in touch with the community, to bring the spirits in the Echo back in line and remind them that even if I'm not around for a stretch of time--even if it's as much as a year, all but non-stop--the memory of my shadow should be enough to keep their asses in the Echo where they belong. I don't like that. It does not in any way give me anything I would call satisfaction to know that my two purposes in life are so disparate that dedicating myself to one of them means letting the other atrophy into uselessness. I suppose as always I am a creature of duality and I cannot escape that. Life is a tightrope-walk with two unsavory extremes on either side, after a long and harrowing fall.
I'm also not what one could call 'satisfied' with the nature of most of my relationships. I have, as most people do, a few very close friends. Most of them are in my pack-slash-band or part of our support team. Some of them are not. But most of the people I know, I know on a very sort of superficial level. Shake hands, smile wide, ask about the kids, don't talk about the fact that I can be a nine and a half foot tall monster, don't talk about the fact that their father has cancer and it's breaking their heart to watch him die a slow death. That's not very rewarding. It's especially not very rewarding to not have some kind of partner who understands what I am and what I do both on and off the stage. I suppose if I had to narrow it down, I'm most dissatisfied with the fact that I don't have what the werewolf community would call a mate, but that is a failing in my own personality and nothing more, I think. It is what it is.