Wish I had all the money we used to spend on dope…

7:26 pm, drinking my dinner. Tonight it’s Rolling Rock tallboys because they were on sale. The soundtrack is Tom Waits. The mood is melancholy. The times are tough, but only because I make them so. I miss my old apartment. I miss the ghetto. There is too much room in this fucking place. Too much empty space that I don’t want to fill. I hate possessions. I hate that the word “possession” has four S’s, while “obsession” only has three. I hate a lot of things.

I hate the idea of The American Dream, because I hate lying to myself.

Currently listening to: “Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis” by Tom Waits

Nickel Beers

It takes quite a bit of pain

and depression

to get me to sit down at this thing

and pound out bullshit words.

Some people call it a hobby

but it’s too ridiculous

to be a hobby

and it bleeds too many good men dry.

Tonight I’ve got

nine or ten beers and I’m reading

a memoir by a writer

who has written many bestselling books,

but what does one writer have

to teach another writer

except that there is nothing to teach?

You either do it or you don’t,

and it kills you either way.

The money comes and goes,

the women always leave,

and the bottle never lasts.

And soon the words are just

gibberish atop yellowed pages,

blowing down alleyways

where hookers suck for a fin,

where stillborn dreams

wander still.

Gimme mercy and a minute now…

I told myself I would sit down and write when I got home from work. Well, here I am. It’s a shitty day, shittier than I’ve had in awhile. Those goddamn antidepressants do nothing but cause more anxiety so I’m done with them. I can’t afford to be more scatterbrained than I already am.

This is the time of year when I start to feel old. I mean ancient. I’m only 29 years old, but from the middle of January to the middle of March, I’d swear my soul was 90. I feel like I’m done, finished, check please. The future holds nothing when within the confines of these two hellish months. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, but that doesn’t make it any better. My misery does not, in fact, love company. What it loves is beer and cigarettes and worn-out Bukowski books. Writing used to be on that list, but for some reason, it’s more like work than pleasure these days. That’s what happens during these two months. Time and space mean nothing, life drops off, and pleasure is nowhere to be found. I can’t find any music I can enjoy. I search my 17,000 (give or take) songs and can’t find a single fucking thing. I listen to hours upon hours of podcasts, but only with half an ear, barely processing what little scraps of conversation I happen to catch. I read books, but I seem to go back to the same shit I always read when I’m depressed. Bukowski, Fante (John and Dan), Dostoevsky, and Hamsun. I sit and I drink beer and re-read these books, sometimes for the fifth or sixth time. It’s simple writing that is honest and true and I guess that’s just what I need in times like these. One would think that science fiction or fantasy or a good detective novel would be best to help escape when feeling this way, because escaping seems like the logical thing to do. But reading something I can relate to, knowing that somewhere, somehow, someone wrote a novel that I feel was written about me. Some of these words feel like they have been pulled from my own head. Perhaps I was wrong all along — maybe my misery really does love company. But only the company of the greats, or none at all. Here’s to you, Chinaski.

Currently listening to: “1930″ by The Gaslight Anthem.

Miller Lite Bottles, now with specially designed grooves…like inverted ribbed condoms…

“I am not a writer — that is well documented.”

What I wouldn’t give to have this emblazoned upon my tombstone, after living another 20 years as a literary giant (or outlaw, I have no preference).

To hell with all of that. It’s pointless in this age to try and start a blog, or publish a novel, or to get anyone to read anything, for that matter. The internet is saturated with shit like this (yes, this), and everyone expects everyone else to read what they have to say. My voice is not unique. My writing is sub-par at best. Why I feel the need to share myself with anyone is beyond my capability of understanding. It’s mediocre, and it’s insane. Insanity is sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings with others and expecting them to care. Move over, Einstein, time for redefinition.

There are too many tv shows. Too many blogs. Too many shitty movies. Too many idiots roaming the streets in shitbox cars and dirty diapers. Too many of everything. We are a dying breed. Look at your neighbor and tell me that I’m lying.

Holding myself hostage with no demands…

I’ve been depressed lately, and I don’t feel like doing anything. I mean ANYTHING. Taking out the trash, cleaning, showering…nothing. Well, drinking, but that’s a given. I sit and I watch The Shield and I drink beer. I lay there and wish I was someone else, in another life, in someone else’s skin, in someone else’s mind. It’s hell being in this one. But there’s no reason for any of it, as far as I can see. I’m simply depressed. I guess to be fair, I’ve always had a healthy (or unhealthy, whatever) amount of self-hatred. That’s baseline for me, and I can deal with that. But with the depression and loss of motivation comes gluttony and sloth, which in turn adds fat to the frame and fuel to the fire. So that hatred just grows and grows and there is nothing I can do with it except talk to myself and talk to walls. I’m trying out a steady diet of Xanax, Wellbutrin, caffeine and red wine, and see if I can’t get myself to write again. I did this much, but now I’m exhausted. Time for a refill…Oh waiter?

I was sitting here eating dinner and I started smelling something, and I couldn’t tell if it was my balls or the fish I was eating. That’s gross. I better take a shower.

Currently listening to: “World Coming Down” by Type O Negative.

It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders…

Today I thought about someone that I rarely think about. Because every time I do, I feel empty. It’s stupid — I was the one who left, I was the one who wanted out, but still I feel this way. Is it because I miss her, or is the thought of her just a catalyst for this general feeling of emptiness? I can’t say. I don’t know. What I do know is that The National has never sounded better.

It’s never a good thing when I get home from work, immediately pour alcohol and commence to drink in the dark and listen to music. They call it brooding. I suppose I’d call it the same. I can’t say it makes me feel particularly good or particularly bad, it just is what it is — a sad, fat man sitting in a room alone with red wine and listening to Type O Negative and The Smiths. Twenty-nine going on fifteen, huh? That’s what I thought when I was writing that. I’m far too old for this bullshit. I’m certainly not knocking Pete or Morrissey and their respective gangs, but a man-child hanging out with them drunk in the dark at twenty-nine years old is in need of one of three things: intense psychoanalysis (preferably Jungian), sexual intercourse with a decent looking specimen of the fairer sex, or a morphine drip. I have none of these, so I’m going to the bar to hang out with my oldest friend. I can’t put my sausage-like finger on it, but talking to someone who has known you since you were five years old always seems to put things into perspective somehow.

Speaking of being young — every time I go back to my parents house, I see this framed picture of myself when I was probably six months old, or a year, who knows. Point is, I looked happy. I was smiling my little ass off. And why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t have anything to worry about. I had food, lodgings, everything taken care of. Not that I had any conscious knowledge of having or needing those things. I had no need to read books by the likes of Ernest Becker and Viktor Frankl, no need for Layne Staley or Charles Bukowski. Would I rather live life without books and music? No. But is the fact that I need these things indicative of some deeper fear? Is all art conceived through the fear of nonexistence?

Dark + booze + music = see above paragraphs. Sometimes I can’t decide whether the ability to think and feel is good or bad. I know I’m basically just pissing ridiculous whiny words all over an innocent white page here, but it’s either this or I talk to the walls, and they were long ago tired of listening.

Currently listening to: “Lemonworld” by The National.