LJ Idol Week 12: Failure
Failure? Failure is sitting here on a cloud-shrouded-moon night with this bottle of sweet cheap port wine, eating a grocery store picnic with numb fingers and talking to you. Yeah, we’re far from the city. Far from home and in a beautiful place. But what are we even doing? It’ll likely be too wet to climb tomorrow, even if I can find a partner. Shit, it’s not even Friday. Do you think my boss will try to call me when I don’t come in tomorrow or just assume? And what would he even assume? Hell, maybe nobody else goes in tomorrow either. This 2020 world has gotta feel something like the end of the world to some of them, too.
And, yeah, a part of me is thinking maybe I’ll get up in the morning and call in and explain that I’m really not feeling well and another part of me really wants to know what it would look like to let it all burn. That’s what everyone else is doing, or at least that’s how it seems. Just getting theirs and watching the rest burn.
I think failure is not picking a side. Not picking any side but your own. Not knowing which side you want to win, or even knowing of a side of this mess that you think deserves decision-making power. It’s all so broken.
I don’t even know what side you’re on. I guess that’s part of why I wanted to meet you all the way out here.
So what do you say? You used to be in the military, and I guess I just hoped that because of that, you’d be able to tell me something about what forces are really at work here. Maybe you could tell me about a side worth being on. Talk about dumb. I've always been one to fall into magical thinking.
Who the hell am I even kidding. I miss you. I miss my imperfect memory of our friendship. I miss being the person that I was when we were friends. I miss being someone who thought they understood how they were making things better. And I also wanted to show you this beautiful place.
But you didn’t even really show up. Probably because I never even really invited you.
I’m just up here, sitting on the edge of a mountain. Living on the edge. Surrounding myself with beauty when I can. Striving always. And drinking all alone.
These are maudlin thoughts; these thoughts of failure. And anyway, I’m one of the luckiest ones. It falls to me to create a good side if I can’t find one to support. I need to stop whining and pining for rescue. But it is pretty much exactly like Jimmy Buffett wrote in He Went to Paris. The business of just living life will take over if you let it. Summers and winters scattered like splinters and, yeah, twenty more years slipped away.
Failure is not knowing, I suppose, whether you’re balancing things correctly. Whether you should be working this job, supporting your family this way, or whether there’s some other, better option. Maybe you should have gone with something easier, something that would leave you with just a little more time and energy for something other than your career. But is anything ever easy if you do it right? I don’t think so.
So “Cheers!” my old friend. “¡Salúd!” Someday we’ll meet again and I’ll fill you in on all of this, and with any luck the theme will be something other than failure.
And, yeah, a part of me is thinking maybe I’ll get up in the morning and call in and explain that I’m really not feeling well and another part of me really wants to know what it would look like to let it all burn. That’s what everyone else is doing, or at least that’s how it seems. Just getting theirs and watching the rest burn.
I think failure is not picking a side. Not picking any side but your own. Not knowing which side you want to win, or even knowing of a side of this mess that you think deserves decision-making power. It’s all so broken.
I don’t even know what side you’re on. I guess that’s part of why I wanted to meet you all the way out here.
So what do you say? You used to be in the military, and I guess I just hoped that because of that, you’d be able to tell me something about what forces are really at work here. Maybe you could tell me about a side worth being on. Talk about dumb. I've always been one to fall into magical thinking.
Who the hell am I even kidding. I miss you. I miss my imperfect memory of our friendship. I miss being the person that I was when we were friends. I miss being someone who thought they understood how they were making things better. And I also wanted to show you this beautiful place.
But you didn’t even really show up. Probably because I never even really invited you.
I’m just up here, sitting on the edge of a mountain. Living on the edge. Surrounding myself with beauty when I can. Striving always. And drinking all alone.
These are maudlin thoughts; these thoughts of failure. And anyway, I’m one of the luckiest ones. It falls to me to create a good side if I can’t find one to support. I need to stop whining and pining for rescue. But it is pretty much exactly like Jimmy Buffett wrote in He Went to Paris. The business of just living life will take over if you let it. Summers and winters scattered like splinters and, yeah, twenty more years slipped away.
Failure is not knowing, I suppose, whether you’re balancing things correctly. Whether you should be working this job, supporting your family this way, or whether there’s some other, better option. Maybe you should have gone with something easier, something that would leave you with just a little more time and energy for something other than your career. But is anything ever easy if you do it right? I don’t think so.
So “Cheers!” my old friend. “¡Salúd!” Someday we’ll meet again and I’ll fill you in on all of this, and with any luck the theme will be something other than failure.