I was fool enough at a New Year\u2019s party to ask a group of friends where, 20 years ago, they imagined they would be in 2013. Most folks had an answer, the usual stuff, and, as we went around the circle and my turn approached, I realized that I thought I\u2019d be dead long before now. So, I said as much.
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The hardest question I face is \u201cwhere do you see yourself in 5 years?\u201d It\u2019s an absurd question to begin with. I could get hit by a falling piano tomorrow, or some motherfucker could fly a plane into my office building. Asking me where I see myself in five years is like asking me what I think the world will be like in 2000 years. Yet this question \u2013 the 5 year one \u2013 seems to haunt me. It\u2019s a staple interview question, a date question, and occasionally asked by family members or friends in what may or may not be a passive sort of attempt at an intervention. I always answer the same \u2013 I have no idea. I thought I\u2019d be dead by 2000, so the last few years have been nothing but a strange dream. <\/p>\n
When I was young, I figured that 25 would be a good time to die. May of 1999. Get it all over with before I had to teach myself to start writing 20XX on everything, which seemed somehow gauche. I was a child of the 1900\u2019s, not the 2000\u2019s. And looking back at the last 13 years, I don\u2019t think I was wrong.<\/p>\n
I also saw 25 as the sort of bridge to adulthood. The first big marker. After 25, you\u2019d have to be responsible. Or something. Frankly, everything after 25 \u2013 life, wife, house, jobs, responsibility \u2013 sounded horribly dull and, perhaps, a little bit insulting. This, too, is something I agree with looking back on the last 13 years. If any word describes my life post-25, it\u2019s pain, or boredom, or disappointment, or horror.<\/p>\n
Weighing everything I\u2019ve achieved, every one I\u2019ve met, everything I\u2019ve done, my only conclusion is that I would have been a lot better off if I had died at 25.<\/p>\n
But I didn\u2019t. I\u2019m stuck. And 2013 storms in exactly the same as 2012. At this point, there\u2019s a certain wandering, hopeless feeling to everything I do. The empty motions of life. It just keeps on going on, seemingly without any design or purpose. It just doesn\u2019t matter\u2026 And I\u2019m weirdly comfortable with the idea that it doesn\u2019t matter. I don\u2019t want it to matter. Being able to tell you where I\u2019ll be in 5 years sounds horrible. The ultimate, defeatist acceptance that we\u2019re just idiot cogs in a wheel, warm sacks of mindless meat drifting in the gulf stream of time. I want things to be unplanned, to be open. I don\u2019t want to be 100% sure where I\u2019ll be tomorrow. Another day at work? Same old same old? Or\u2026maybe I\u2019ll lose it. Maybe I\u2019ll just stop showing up and declare my independence. Maybe I\u2019ll jump a train west, or cash out of the Great Plan entirely and hop a flight to Romania. Maybe I\u2019ll die in the night, or on the way to work. <\/p>\n
I know, deep in my dark heart, that nothing exciting will happen tomorrow. But, here in this strange afterlife, 13 years after my expected demise, there remains hope that things may get interesting\u2026sometime. Something must rise out of this never-ending blood I spill simply to engage the terror of emptiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was fool enough at a New Year\u2019s party to ask a group of friends where, 20 years ago, they imagined they would be in 2013. Most folks had an answer, the usual stuff, and, as we went around the …<\/p>\n