Ideolocator

"And I don't know where I went wrong
All I know now is I got to do something... right?"
-Streetlight Manifesto, We Are The Few


So I'm not sure if you've noticed (of course you didn't notice) but I've been posting even less frequently than my already lax posting habits normally allow. This is because I'm on a magical quest of introspection and self discovery and doing something I call "dynamic meditation" where I basically pace around my room and point at the walls and sometimes yell. (This is how I think.) Why do I need to find myself? Because on June 10th at approximately 8:20 PM I yelled "I AM A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ALBATROSS, AND I AM BEING CONFINED IN A CAGE; A CAGE OF THE MIND, A CAGE OF THE SPIRIT, A CAGE OF THE SOUL!!!"

I have about three and a half weeks to finish finding myself. Most people have to do this in their late 30's and only if they have the time and money to go to Morocco or Tibet and could at least be loosely classified as an artist. I can't even buy booze yet, I consider going to Panda Express a night on the town, and my "art" consists mostly of saying "shit man, that's so sci-fi."

But being a metaphorical caged albatross isn't a good enough explanation for you, is it? I think the albatross explanation is a better one, because the concrete reasons have to do with a) depression and b) the only thing I've had to deal with that sucks more than depression, which is running. Both make you not want to get out of bed and both make you eat a lot of random things at random times. Oh, and I'm also lactose intolerant now. Not sure how that one happened.

But basically I ran so hard that I broke my back in two (2) places and then after doing rehab for a few months realized that I liked hanging out with Scully and Mulder better than I liked hanging out with my real friends. But I just thought I was anemic, and when I went into student health for a blood test they also tested my white blood cell count and cortisol levels and all kinds of other crazy things that sometimes show up in your blood, including blood parasites, and even tested me for something that sounds like the exact opposite of diabetes where eating any kind of simple sugar makes your blood sugar immediately crash. Then they told me I was probably depressed but of course I know better, depression is just a made-up disease by the media and the government and the man, so I hung out with Scully and Mulder some more until I realized there was nothing actually physically wrong with me except for excessive scar tissue in my foot and lower back and a disc that's herniated by about 6 millimeters. But really this all has to do with running, and more importantly recalibrating my brain so that I can be good again. Because having two stress fractures and a herniated disc does even more mental damage than it does physical damage.

So I opted out of living in the mountains and growing a beard and pooping among God's creatures for the summer, and instead am working part time for corporate America (I am legally obligated not to say anything bad about the company I work for) and spending lots of time reexamining myself and, of course, running.

The obvious solution, which I'm doing my darndest to avoid, would be antidepressants. Antidepressants are the American Dream finally come to fruition; it's happiness in a pill. And not only do we have happiness in a pill, we have skinny in a pill, boner in a pill, not-baby in a pill, even hair in a pill. Our forefathers (well, not my forefathers, but somebody's forefathers) crossed this great continent with nothing but willpower and dysentery so that one day, we could take a pill that made all our perceived troubles (but not our actual troubles) melt away and rock-solid erections that lasted up to four hours. They also envisioned places where you could buy funnel cake and then puke it up thirty minutes later without having an eating disorder.

But yes, I am rediscovering who I am as a runner and hoping that will help me realize more about myself as a human. Actually, it's become sort of the opposite. I'm learning about myself and contemplating the human condition and the soul and the mind and, ok, who am I kidding, I'm running to the point where fatigue and mild dehydration fries my brain.

Here are some things I have realized so far:

• I'm edgy. I got a gritty reboot, which makes me edgy.
• The Virgin Mary cries tears of blood every time you read a book by Deepak Chopra.
• Most people think in clichés, and some can only think in clichés. But like my grandma always said, "three in the bushellbasket is worth five on the lampstand!" Why get a college education when you know that little gem?
• The mind is probably some sort of interface mechanism between the soul and the body. I have identified seven factors (and counting) which determine the nature of one's soul. They are too complex and too nascent in my mind at this point in time to explain in bullet point form.
• Being lactose intolerant is way more fun than being lactose tolerant. Instead just having one kind of milk to choose from, you have soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk ,and even hemp milk. And don't even get me started on all the varieties of fake ice creams I can experiment with.
• Loving something or someone means that you are willing to completely destroy yourself for it. By this definition, running may be the only thing I've actually ever loved.
• This means that Billy Joel was wrong when he said he never loved his first wife, Whatserface.
• If you have lost all faith in humanity, then, and only then, can you justify believing in an ideological absolute.

This whole expedited process of finding myself has taken me through some phases rather quickly. A few weeks ago, as I was preparing finals, I had the introspective (and sleep-deprived) phase where I looked around me and saw nothing but empty people sucking the conformist corporate teet. Then as my blood became less blood-based and more caffeine-based I had that manic, crazy, thousand thoughts a second won't shut up won't somebody please listen to me about how our generation needs courage phase. Then I got edgy, real edgy, got irreverent, got a tad hedonistic. There followed a brief twelve hours of disassociation from reality. Then I had the nihilistic phase, which came in two parts, the first where I realized that my essence at the atomic level is nothing but bullshit and that everything I had realized recently was void because of my own character flaws. Then I had the drone phase, where about four days passed and I don't think I thought anything. Then I had a rekindling of my faith in humanity and the importance of interpersonal interaction, and now I've been two days in the austerity phase, where I just get things done and live simply. It's been a little over a month. I may not find the true essence of myself, if that even exists, but I will probably find something.

But now that I think about it, happiness in a pill isn't exactly the American Dream. Finding yourself in 6-8 weeks, that's the American Dream. And I can't decide if that makes me spiritually bankrupt or just one helluva self-actualizing man.

Let's say neither, for now.

A Lesson We Can All Learn from Tom Petty

Listening to classic rock radio has taught me some valuable life lessons.  For example, a few weeks ago, I got in the car, and turned on the radio just as the riff from "China Grove" was playing.  This is the riff that opens the song, but it also plays in the middle, and my buzz was killed when I realized that I wasn't going to hear all of China Grove, I was just going to hear the last chorus and the vamp out.  But just as it was ending, Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain," which in my opinion is an even more awesome song, came on.  The lesson?  Even if something is ending or didn't last as long as you wanted it to, something with an even higher degree of ass-kickerry is right around the corner.

But the latest and most important lesson I've learned from classic rock radio actually came from a new song that they still somehow have dubbed "classic rock" simply because it's by an older artist who definitely... has the bulk of his career behind him, shall we say.  Although he is now 60, Tom Petty, with the aid of his trusty Heartbreakers, has released a new album.  I would in no way have any problem with this album if it weren't for the album's biggest single, "I Should Have Known It."

Everyone says "it sounds like Zeppelin!"  Big, heavy, bluesy guitar riffs, a plodding beat with loud cymbals and a heavy snare, and tortured, broken vocals, sounds awesome and Zeppelin-esque, don't it?

Except that it's Tom Petty, and not Robert Plant.

Tom Petty is a great singer and a great musician, but for all his talent Tom Petty is really only good at sounding like Tom Petty.  And on "I Should Have Known It," it seems as though he's trying to sound like something he's not.  The instrumentals kick ass, and he has the attitude right, but it just doesn't work.  Tom Petty just isn't the kind of singer who handles that kind of vocal line well, and the song falls flat as a result.  (Yes, I realize I am constantly referring to Tom Petty by his full name. I feel like he's one of those people who should always be referred to by their full name, because he's not monumental enough to be just "Tom" and just calling him "Petty" sounds weird.  Get used to it.)

So, what does it mean that Tom Petty made a song that he shouldn't have made because singing it just doesn't suit him well? Does it mean he's any less of a musician or a performer or that it detracts from any of the other albums he's made? Does this cause him to unmake Full Moon Fever? Not at all.

I want to be able to do everything, and if I can't, or am not good at something, I feel like it's almost a character flaw, something that's wrong with me.  I want to be able to be good at everything, which is just plain impossible.  And I feel like everyone else is good at more things than I am.

But some people just aren't good at certain things, and these same people excel at other things.  You probably suck at way more things than you are good at.  My problem is that I want to not suck at anything and be good at everything, and it kills me, literally damages my self-image, when I can't do something.  This is not healthy.

One of my best friends called me out on this, and I sort of realized what was wrong with me, but to be honest, for all of her verbally slapping me upside the head with my own stupidity, it didn't really congeal in my mind until I heard "I Should Have Known It" (and hated it) playing on the radio the next day.  Sometimes, people just aren't good at certain things, but that doesn't detract from what they can do, and more importantly, who you are as a person.  Because chances are, you're amazing, even if you can't sing a Zeppelin-esque blues/play soccer/play video games/dance/run fast/jump high/talk good/meet people/blow your nose/get out of bed/do whatever very well.

So if you're reading this, and you know me, this is my apology (kind of lame, I know) for the way I've been acting as of late, and I'm sorry I had to learn my lesson from Tom Petty instead of from you guys.  I'm learning to accept what I can't do. Because there are so many things I can't do.