Black Sheep

There's one in every family. Possibly two or three. They're the kids who grow up with their eyes not looking at what's in front of them, but wondering what's around the corner. That mysterious wonder is not out of fear, but out of excitement. What's the point in exploring what's right in front of you? That's easy. It's already here.... but what about the potential of what's out there?

I feel that my entire family is a black sheep within society. Never really fitting in to the conformity of society. Always acting up in public with the general public cocking their heads to one side and wondering how we were able to tie our shoes in the morning. Well guess what world??? My dad wears velcro shoes, so HA! The black sheep are always given a little bit more leeway when it comes to projects in the family because they're a bit "special". Not mentally, but the entire soul.

I realized I was the black sheep when I decided I wanted to move to NY when I was, oh let's say 15. Why? I have no clue. I just knew I wanted to be at the place where it seemed exciting to just wake up. To get out of bed every day and go do a Broadway show and hang out with David Letterman and Larry "Bud" Melman. Although, there was a flip side that I didn't put together yet. By moving to NY, becoming an artist, and living my life from one week to the next, I was giving up the thing that I would become extremely jealous of in my friends: security. It's no secret. Everywhere in the country, most kids graduate high school, go to the college that's pretty close to home, and get married before they're 30 to someone in the area and now they have a home, kids, and 2 sets of grandparents to babysit pretty regularly. The last statement that I just made seems about as foreign to me as Obama's health care package. It might never seem it, but I wish I had fallen in that pattern. Working in Columbus, hanging out with my childhood friends, seeing my parents regularly, and starting a Buckeye family. Sadly, none of those things will ever be true for me.

I would argue that I did not choose the life I lead, but it chose me. Who in their right mind would decide to become an artist with all of the other jobs there are in the world? This week consists of me going to rehearsal 3 times and learning the Shakespeare text to Twelfth Night and performing an all male reading of the show with the women parts in dresses. I've really decided to change the world here! But I don't know what else to do with this life I was given. I was put here to change people. To help people. To teach people. To experience so much every day that my brain wants to explode and deliver that knowledge to others. If this reading helps someone in their own life, then I have done my job. That is why I'm a child of the world. It is very seldom that someone in today's society can say, "I have absolutely no idea where I'll be in 2 years." I think that every day. I honestly have absolutely no freakin clue where I will physically be in 2 years. I could be in Wyoming, California, Ohio, Florida, NYC, or Africa. This is where the shitty part comes in: I'm not too worried about it. Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Black sheep live day to day. Our first marriage usually comes after others' 2nd divorces. We have more jobs in a decade than most people have in a lifetime. We are able to pack up an apartment in a weekend and know the best ways to get from place to place. We are loved by our families and we love our families more than anything, but we feel we aren't able to express it in the same way as our siblings who are geographically closer.

Lots of good points to it though. We live in the moment. We never know what the next day will bring. We meet hundreds of people a year and some remain friends and some fade. We love facebook because we can keep in contact with the people we feel we left behind or left us behind. We see the world. Sometimes we have that feeling of a child when the box the gift came in at Christmas is good enough to keep our interests heightened.

On the other hand, black sheep feel left out. We're always the last ones called in a family emergency. We always hear the "we didn't want to tell you because you would just worry and there's nothing you can do there." We miss weddings. We miss birthdays. We miss funerals. We miss watching our nieces and nephews get bigger and listen as their vocabulary stuns adults. We miss having a big home. We're not always understood. We usually offend people. We never think anything is ever "enough".

There's a balance. What we love about other people, they hate, and vice versa. In a perfect world, I wish I could transport home when I wanted to but keep leading the exploration life I love so much.

Hi. My name is Jason. And I am a black sheep.