And now, the world ends.

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Current Mood:  sore

Folks… Christina Ricci is engaged, and not to me.  And his name is Owen Benjamin.  And that fucker is 6’6″, a full two inches taller than I am.  So… many… reasons… to hate… him…

But if I really think about it, the fact is that the days of me lusting after a Hollywood actress, or worse, just her public image (and admittedly, privately thinking that hey, maybe someday, you never know)… well those days are long over.  Which is to say, I’m over it.  I know enough to know that your dreams rarely turn out the way you expected, and that even when you actually get exactly what you wanted, most times you find out it’s not what you thought it was going to be.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that what you want changes.  Most of the time this is a good thing, because at least for me, it often matches what’s available.  For instance, if I still wanted from life what I wanted when I was say 20, then I think I’d be less-than-thrilled with my life today.  But if I think about my life when I was 20 now, it doesn’t appeal to me anymore.  (OK, that’s not totally true… the 20-year-old me would have envied the 29-year-old me’s city life and bank account… and the 29-year-old me does somewhat envy the 20-year-old me’s sex life and eating habits.)

Anyway, my point is just that I’m beginning to think (or realize?) that there’s no silver bullet for happiness.  There’s no one thing that you can achieve or procure that’s going to allow you to finally relax and say, “I did it.  I’m a success.  It’s all beer and Skittles from here on out.”  There is no being complete.  What you want from life, how you define success, it all changes over time.  The things that made you happy 10 years ago… 10 days ago… are not necessarily the same as the things that will make you happy 10 days from now.  Not that it’s meaningless to plan long term, nor is setting goals a waste of time… but finding a way to be happy in the moment, regardless of your circumstance, is the only real guarantee.  You can spend weeks… years… of your life working towards something only to find out that when you get there, it wasn’t what you expected.  But it was only a waste if you sacrificed your own happiness along the way.  Holy shit, did I just accidentally derive the syrupy theorem of “Life is a journey, not a destination?”  What is happening to me?

In lighter news, I will almost definitely end up with a pink couch from Ikea, but that hasn’t stopped me from checking out some alternatives.  And my, are there alternatives.  How about couches made from coffins?  Also, aside from the gaudy Chevy couch I mentioned here once before, I think that someday, if and when I share a kitchen with someone, we’ll be decorating it with stuff from American Retro Furniture.  I want a restaurant booth instead of a dining room table!

The Blank show on Friday was a hoot.  The rockabilly theme went over well, and it was so nice to be able to get some public use out of a Gretsch.  It felt natural.  The crowd (maybe our biggest there yet) was sufficiently drunk and loud by the second half of the night, and we played until the club manager made us stop for closing time.  Big thanks to all the usual suspects who came out for the show, as well as some folks that don’t make it out too often.  Hope y’all had as much fun as we did!

“I started something,
And I forced you to a zone,
And you were clearly
Never meant to go.
Hair brushed and parted,
Typical me, typical me, typical me,
I started something…
And now I’m not too sure.”

MySpace Archive maturing