On the brink

As I was running yesterday, I realized that I am always on the edge. I am always teetering, just a step away from disaster. Every day, I have an internal battle that I sometimes win and sometimes lose. I'm not sure if I win more, or lose more. Let's take running for example. I know I should do it, I know I need to do it, or at least some sort of physical exercise. Even on mornings that I win the initial battle and actually go running, while I'm running, I constantly negotiate with myself. "I can do X miles today. I can. I can. No. Nevermind, I want to stop. No, keep going! Keep going! But my heart hurts..."

This applies somewhat to every aspect of my life. I always feel like I am just about to go over the edge and end up in a downward spiral, and end up in some trailer park, watching satellite TV on a second-hand couch eating potato chips in a sweat-stained wife beater undershirt and briefs, and unable to pay the rent.

On the other extreme, I often have flashes of ambition, where I want to do something truly amazing, perhaps write a best-selling novel, or start a succesful business, or even write and direct an award-winning screenplay. I don't know - but the point is, I want it to be something above and beyond what I consider a "typical" existence, of a job, mortgage, wife, kids, dysfunction.

Then again, sometimes I settle into the resignation that I will probably end up somewhere in between the above scenarios, in the typical existence I am trying to avoid. And then my life will be over. Will it have mattered then?

Right now, I am trying to maintain an equilibrium that will bring me closer to my ideal of an atypical life rather than the other alternatives, but it's a daily struggle - some days I really just want to sleep until noon and then watch Judge Hatchett, while eating potato chips. Whatever the outcome, I know it will include sweet, succulent, tasty, dark russet potato chips.