tonight.

And what am I doing (or not doing) now, as the world would seem to have it, that I wasn’t doing (or was) before? And what, precisely, is the nature of the accusation against me? I can’t tell. I can’t even hear it properly, I just hear that I’m responding to it rather poorly.

—

I have done a lot of things. I don’t, however, feel as though it was another “I,” some other “self,” more accomplished and less moody, that did them. So far as I can tell, I am the same as I have always been. Unorthodox and uneven in some ways, with accomplishment that appears to come in fits and bursts.

Will I have others?

I can only hope and assume so. Making them happen, however, is something that feels to me as though it’s more at issue this time—as if I won’t accidentally “fall” into successes as a matter of my path through the world, as happened before.

So what is apparently needed is that I attempt to maintain an incredible amount of mental discipline and act intentionally at all times so as to be above reproach on the one hand and so as to be sure not to be passed by by time and life on the other.

The steps? Are there to be steps? Surely it’s simply a matter of work, work, work, no matter what, insistently and ruthlessly, and grump, grump, grump at those who would interrupt me, alter my course, or give me advice.

But these things are not so simple. One wants a life beyond work and one wants to be loved. Discipline is difficult to maintain in the face of everything that is.

I don’t know. I guess we’ll just see what happens and I’ll try my damnedest to make progress in all things, all the time, in all ways.

Words. Rhetoric. God knows.

that brings out the deepest, darkest forms of conservatism in a person? Is not life short? Are not all things the same? Does not Hitler still rule the earth, and Stalin, and Bush? What is the point of pretending that there is anything to do but win, to win big, or to lose, and lose big?

There was a time when I was adamantly opposed to mediocrity.

It would seem that giving a damn threatens to resurrect mediocrity in even the most adamantly willful of souls. Certainly that seems to be the thing in my case.

—

There was also a time in which I knew what it meant to be proactive. I worked a job a year for a pearlstring of years. I wrote six books. I edited a ton of others. I went to multiple universities. I dropped out when I wanted to. I re-enrolled when I wanted to.

The implicit pressure that accompanies the desire for stability carries with it a moderating influence whose fruit are bitter indeed. There is no place in heaven or in hell for moderates. Moderates are of the earth; moderates are of the dust; moderates are destined to be forgotten; moderates are destined for merely moderate success or merely moderate failure.

—

The time has come to take risks again; to misbehave again; to stop with the Responsibility garbage and the Adulthood garbage, especially if these things mean that I will alienate people anyway.

If the result is the same—if I am doomed to alienate those around me whether or not I play the game for big prizes, whether or not I follow my own star rather than someone elses—then I may as well embrace the risk.

—

Maybe it is time to write again. It is certainly time to approach exams and tasks cocksure once again, and it is also time to think about moving on in my career once again. These things cannot be won; they can only be lost big or neither won nor lost at all. So it is time to think about losing big, because every major loss is also a major accomplishment, even if it isn’t a major win.

—

There are other things to do beside worry about a lot of mediocre nobodies in a mediocre office on twenty-sixth streeth. There are other schools that will have me if this one won’t after an encumbered exam performance. It’s not as though this is Harvard or Chicago or Oxford. Even if it were, even if I were at Harvard or Chicago or Oxford, it’s not as though I won’t die anyway, sooner or later.

—

I wrote once. I can write again.
I quit once. i can quit again.
I excelled once. I can excel again.
I was cocky as a fucking bull once. I can frighten the fuck out of the world again.

—

There is no point in growing up. No point.

The only thing is to win and win big or to lose and lose big.

It is the big that matters. Everything else is purely mediocrity.

And mediocrity is for the mediocre.

—

Amen.