I have Baby Boomer angst big time. My first act was a bust (and still busting—a dissonant, unfulfilled, soul-strangling existence in corporate America)—and I feel like time is running out on the second (successful writing career).
As such, I have two visions of my future.
In the first I’m wearing a Ceil Chapman wiggle dress with Manolos, reclining on a chaise lounge on the patio of my cool house. I stare out over my vineyards in the Napa Valley, sipping a fine champagne* (maybe by this time I have not only upgraded from Barefoot Bubbly to Mumm’s Brut Reserve, but they’re my neighbors as well!) as an orangey-fuchsia sunset paints the sky and Green Day’s music wafts over the gentle foothills, serenading me.
[Note: Currently I own no vineyards. I don’t have a cool house. I don’t even have a patio, which makes a chaise lounge unnecessary. Also, no Ceil Chapman or Manolos. But a girl can DREAM. Especially with at least two bottles of Barefoot Bubbly at my disposal at any given moment.)
My second vision, I’m sitting on the curb of a dirty street with my feet in the gutter, wearing non-designer jeans and well-worn Converse All-Stars, wishing I had any kind of champagne. Next to me is my brother, wearing filthier shoes than me (and worse clothes)—and we’re laughing. Because no matter how bad it is, we can always find something to laugh at—like how he (the class Valedictorian) and me (also pretty smart) ended up like this. Pretty darn funny!
But here’s the reality:
I’m in a giant cage, running on one of those hamster wheels—spinning faster and harder—and getting absolutely nowhere.
Our of the corner of my eye I see Ye Ol’ Hubby Man, doing the exact same thing. But I can’t look at him and he can’t look at me—or we might fall off the wheel and crash and burn.
So, what to do? I drag my rebounder (mini-trampoline—one of the best exercises ever) into the middle of my living room, grab two dumbbell weights, and crank American Idiot to volume 30. (That’s LOUD.)
As Billy Joe Armstrong sings, “But there’s nothing wrong with me, this is how I’m supposed to be. In a land of make-believe, that don’t believe in me!”I punch the air with the weights like Ali on crystal meth.
Song after song, hopping, kicking, twisting, boxing, singing…
City of the dead, at the end of another lost highway. Signs misleading to nowhere.
We are the kids of war and peace, from Anaheim to the Middle East.
I walk a lonely road. The only one that I have ever known. Don’t know where it goes….I walk this empty street on the boulevard of broken dreams.
We are we are we are we are the waiting unknown.
I’m here to represent the needle in the vein of the establishment.
She’s a rebel. Vigilante.
And my favorite from the song “Holiday”:
I beg to DREAM and differ from the hollow lies. This is the dawning of the rest of our lives.
Try that exercise for thirty minutes (with songs of your choice). IMPOSSIBLE not to be inspired—and/or high on endorphins.
With noradrenalin raging, serotonin pumping, and dopamine flying…sweaty and rubbing my lower back, I trudge on…toward Vision #1.
Oh yeah, and it helps to have faith, perseverance, and conviction, (and a touch of lunacy?), too.
