There are numerous, generally meaningless catch phrases for how to live a happy life, or a meaningful life, or a life worth living one way or another. I have an instinctual disdain for oversimplification, ergo, catch phrases tend to make me want to blow my own pseudo-intellectual snark factory out the side of my head with a pressure washer crammed in my ear hole. That said, I will credit all of these silly platitudes for one meaningful shared concept. They almost always, in one form or another, call for action. If you want a happy life, do something about it.

As for me, I wouldn't necessarily say I've grabbed life by the balls, but I've definitely stuck my finger in its butthole.

The last thing the world needs is another me. Another voice of reason. Another boy. Another white person. Another weak link in the chain of Christianity. Another unfocused artist. Heaven forbid another moderately talented wanna-be artist. The last thing this world needs is another me. Another person futilely resisting their place within mediocrity. Another me is already out there, expressing himself more eloquently than I possibly could. Turning my base emotions that burn inside, making me want to create, into something tangible and beautiful and expressive on multiple levels I could never achieve or understand. Another me is saying what I want to say, loving how I want to love, living his life with a fearlessness I could only dream of. He is taking the things I’ve been given and applying them towards greatness. Another me is the athlete I never trained to be, and the leader I’m afraid to be. Another me is the person I’m destined to be, but without the patience to wait on destiny. There are millions of mes out there before me, doing a better job at being who I want me to be then I ever could. The last thing this world needs is another me. But, here I am anyways.

The eras of our lives often come to an end without our permission. I find myself filled with both joy and profound sadness when I recognize that an era of my life has come and gone. It typically moves me to tears.

We are surrounded by inequities. As an adult, I am supposed to readily accept these as reality, despite the fact that these inequities go against everything I was taught about right and wrong as a child. It seems to me there is a grand acceptance that we can’t live our lives the way we know we should.

I understand many people fight this easy path. They endeavor to change the world.

The insistent adherence to one particular school of philosophical thought or sociological -ism has way more to do with the indulgence of human nature's desire to be correct, and to win at discourse, than it does reason.

I decided to start collecting litter when I'm out walking the dog. A cranky dude accosted me because little doggie and I were picking up street garbage while out for a hike on a beautiful day. I'm not sure why my desire to help out keeping our neighborhood offended him, but it did.

"What the fuck are you doing?" the unfortunately bitter dude said. "What are you some kind of Jerry Goodbody or something? Why don't you take your aardvark bars and your soy-nut shmelts and go fuck a koala."

"Look man," I said. "It's either this or I'm street jackin the whole time. I have to have something to do with my hands. It's a condition."

"Whatever, you nerdy bitch," he said. "I'm sick and tired of all you do-gooder pieces of shit trying to do good."

So I said, "I don't want to cause any trouble, but I get instantaneous erections when people are mean to me. You're gonna wanna get out of here."

He was not deterred. I ran away.

Humans are machines. Their functional output is dictated by genetics and programming. Anything we do, choices we make, goals we achieve, they are all outcomes of our programming. Who receives what programming is the happenstance of life, the end result of organized chaos.

The dynamic gulf between conservatism and progressivism has reached a point of contentiousness on Earth, I'm not certain we will have a renaissance of civil debate and problem solving without some form of massive, worldwide upheaval. AKA, the Earth freezes over and humanity goes extinct. Problem solved.