I'm What Age??

I haven't been inspired to write in a while even though everything is bat shit crazy here. Then today, I got a message that made my brain flood out. My friend from Otterbein, Celina, is celebrating her 35th birthday today. I celebrated mine back in February. Celina texted me and reminded me that back in college (when texting didn't exist), we made a pact that we would get married when we were 35 if neither of us were by then. Holy shit. That's today. Here were two kids, maybe 20-22 years old, sitting in the palace, or in a fog of smoke at Jonda, or walking to the PIT catch some disease from the carpet, and were thinking waaaaaay ahead to the future when we would be old and figured it would be unheard of to be unmarried at 35. Wow. If something happened today that was the universe telling me something, it was this.

What do we think at the end of college? We're going to marry someone we already know, we're going to get a job in something that we've been studying for the past 4 years, and we have the tools to face any challenge that we come across. Well I wish someone would've taken a frozen deer and bashed me over the head at that moment. I'm 35. I'm fucking 35! What have I been doing for the past 13 years? If this was an essay question on a test, I'd simply answer "I don't know". A lot of significant events and absence o events stick out in my mind. I remember being in NYC. I remember seeing a whole bunch of shows that I couldn't tell you the first thing about, I dated some girls, I made a lot of money, I met thousands of people, I traveled around the city and saw anything and everything. I toured for almost 5 years. I saw the country. I saw the world. I did tv. I did movies. I produced. I directed. I taught. I was a trainer. I was a bartender. I figure I was in NYC for almost 4,400 days of my life. I want one of those days back.

I hate to say this, but I feel I've wasted so much time. I feel like I'm 35 going on 22. I have found a way to let the world move forward and somehow I feel like I sat there and watched it go by. 4,400 days! It's a blur. I moved there to be an actor and I got scared. I found stability and I punked out. I should be able to list 4400 things that I did to work my way UP the ladder, but I feel like I have 3,000 things that have made me a stationary jogger.

I think I sabotage myself so I don't move forward. I focus on my mistakes. I focus on what has held me back. I live my life always believing I WILL do something. EVENTUALLY I will get to something. When does that stop for me? It makes me cry. I sometimes stand isolated and the only phrase that rolls around in my head is "I am a waste". I know what my potential is and I'm nowhere near it and I refuse to do anything about it. I'm not even doing anything now. I'm writing about not doing anything! One of the things I want to do is write!

35 is approaching 40 and that scares the living shit out of me. Gas is almost 4 dollars a gallon. That scares the living shit out of me. Watching the news scares the shit out of me. Listening to firings, layoffs, tuition increases, lower test scores, economy struggles, partisan politics, insurance problems, hatred, death, cutbacks, closings and all other things that will affect me scares the shit out of me.

For some reason, the whole world came crashing down on me this week and I realized I don't think I have what it takes to make it. I have big ideas and dreams and I don't trust myself to follow them through. It frustrates me to all hell because it's all on me. There's a part of me that knows no matter how hard I work, it doesn't matter. I'm being swallowed up by a large void and I have dropped my weapons and have stopped fighting. I have so many things that have been considered successes that I have either not followed through with or destroyed. I have things that I have put an effort into that I have stopped short doing. I have things I want to do and have worldly ideas for that I have never begun. Of the three, which do I even begin to take on as a challenge?

Here is the 35 year old, looking back on myself at 22 and saying "Jason, you have no clue. You're going to make mistake after mistake. The problem is you will have trouble learning from them. At 35, you'll still feel like you do at 22 but only with more physical and emotional scars, more stories, more experience, and things are going to be more expensive." Celina and I thought 35 was going to be major marker in our lives, but actually is a crater in the war ground of my life and I've got my head down and keep charging and hope to kill some enemy along the way.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.......Well I want it back. I should have done this. I could have done that. I would have done that. These phrases go through my head way too many times in a day. I know it's wrong, but I don't seem to change the pattern. And why? Because I know what the past was about. I know I survived it. I know what I liked and didn't like...... But the future fucking scares me. I know I'm going to continue to make mistakes and that hurts me so much. I've made enough mistakes for 300 lifetimes. I'm a mistake machine.