You get what you need?

            Every single person will fail.

Spectacularly.  Unequivocally, in a manner that will redefine the word failure.  That is one of mankind’s greatest achievements.  No matter what, our failures will be our own.

I’ve just graduated college.  I’m looking out onto the world with the hopes of continuing my writing in a manner of ways.  Hopefully professionally, and even more hopefully widely read/experienced/enjoyed.  And of course I’m hoping to lead a full life.  I want to backpack through the Appalachian trail, maybe even on horseback.  I want to see my Steelers win a seventh Super Bowl (hopefully in person on the fifty yard-line, but I’ll settle for an endzone seat).  Heck, I maybe even want to get married and have kids.

But weirdly enough, I also want to experience the sorrows of this world just as much.  I want to get my heart broken, if only to know that it was given to someone else.  I want to feel the loss that others feel, so I can be there for them.  And most importantly, I do in fact want to fail.  As myself, on my own terms, I want to fail.

I want my writing to be labeled in as many four-letter words as are onomatopoetically possible.  I want my first five chances at a relationship spin widely out of control to the point where both of us are running out the door.  I even want to get pelted with rotten fruit once or twice (hasn’t been rotten yet, but I’m working on it).

The reason I want these things is so I can grow.  I am looking out on a blank slate that is my future, and I know that only I can truly and irrevocably screw it up.  But it is also only me that can make it a life for the ages.  Maybe my writing isn’t as widely reviewed as I want it to be, but it could start having an effect on people’s lives.  Thirty years after I’m dead, maybe someone will pull up this site and think ‘who is this guy, and why does he sound like my life?’  that would probably be the coolest thing ever, and I’d roll over in my grave and shout ‘repeat that again, I wasn’t paying attention.’

Live, laugh, love.  For me, writing is a part of that, and failure is all four.  Experience the highs of this life, people, and laugh at your woes.  If nothing else, they are truly yours.  If only because no one else wants them.

Stay strange, folks

“You can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.”

-          Mick Jagger, modern day philosopher