Waiting for your life to start, then you die? Was your heart beating in the first place?
Two years ago today I made a pretty big career change. Not that my old job was much of a career. It was a summer job I took just for the health insurance benefits so I could fix my back, but I ended up staying 12 years. I really enjoy what I'm doing now, despite still feeling a lot of shame for never finishing college. Years ago I was told that I'd never make anything of myself. Now after spending what has literally been half my life trying to prove otherwise, I'm just really aware of my failures. I don't even know what I was hoping to do specifically. I just wanted some sort of achievement upon which I could hang my hat that would make people go, "That Charlie is alright." I went about it all wrong too. I looked over my old posts on here and it was like I was just trying to amplify whatever parts of my personality I thought made me look cool, or witty, or sexy, or intriguing, or smart. I ended up making caricatures of myself. The struggling musician, the passionate lover, the lovable alcoholic, the political radical, the wounded artist. None of it was really me, just the narcissistic ideas of what I thought I should be. At the same time I'd constantly air my dirty laundry and bad mouth nearly every person in my life at one time or another. It was as if destroying them would lift me up and put me closer to being something special. I still don't know if I've amounted to anything, I probably never will, it's not my place to say. But if I truly had to define myself now at 35, I'd be forced to say, "college dropout, twice failed husband, decent electrician, and father." I like the last one. He's just as weird as I was when I was his age, I just hope he doesn't make as big of a mess of things as I have.

2 feet on the ground. | Go ahead, you can laugh all you want.