...lost something along the way...

I hate sleeping, something most people don't realize about me.

And many things keep me awake at night. Money, bills, can I take care of my wife? And that sort of thing.

But that's not the sort of thing that really fuels my sleepless nights. It's a subtle feeling that haunts me and my dreams (or undreams) of wondering if I'm where I want to be right now.

It's of feeling of wanting to be more, to be bigger, to leave some sort of legacy behind. Push the boundary and stretch the envelope.

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…. [...] Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson said that in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and it seems to hold some sort of profound truth. We, as a generation, need to strive to leave a legacy, a staple, some sort of indication that we were here and we were important.

We are not sheep.

I hate sleeping because the fact that I lie in the bed for 8 hours achieving nothing is torture to me. Could I be writing? Sending a poetry submission? Reading a book? Searching for the element that will ultimately push me to the next level of literary brilliance?

I'm fighting everyday to make my actions and my words significant. The thought that I might be forgotten terrifies me.

How can I make the lives of the people that I encounter everyday better? Certainly my actions are not meaningless, the words that I say are not hollow, the emotions that ravage my mind not sterile and cold...or are they?

When do you look back and admit either defeat or refuse to be beaten? It is so tempting to simply surrender to the mediocrity that has become America. Conformity is individualistic and words become hollow.

Who are we? Consumers? Buyers? Mediocre menial minds that can't manage to rise above? TO challenge? To be heard?

We lost something along the way... be nocturnal. Be heard.

It is what it is.

-josh-