I can’t believe April is over already.

It’s 9:30 in the morning and I’m sitting at my computer. Last night felt lonely for some reason. A friend of mine has begun working at small business that sells airsoft guns over the internet, so he bought an M83 and another friend came up on his brother’s M4-looking gun. We went driving in Turnbull canyon while they fired airsoft pellets out the windows at passing signs. I had a pistol, (which I wielded menacingly enough but picked out a P90 [which i shit myself over when i saw it] from the website and gave my friend money for it, I should get it today) but I was driving, so I didn’t get to do much shooting. Seemed kind of boring anyway, you know, shooting signs. We should be hunting people. I hear it’s the most dangerous prey.

When I got home, I (as well as my penis for separate reasons) sat around missing my ex-girlfriend. I thought about the usual things: how hard life feels even though life is so easy; how we as creatures are not built for free time and thus instinctually worry constantly about whether or not we should be out hunting and gathering or not, even when we don’t need to, even when there is nothing else we can do in a day; whether the loss of easy internet access is causing this minor blue period; endless denial and justification of my aloneness; how it can be very easily looked at as sad that the highlight of my week will end up being a $40 airsoft P90 that is, in all actuality, a “fling money turned into plastic BBs out into the world pointlessly” device; how badly I now miss intense, emotional sex; how awesome Braid was, and how I need to beat And Yet It Moves; intense jealousy at the fact that John Carmack and John Romero were younger than me by the time they were selling video games that made them $20,000 a month (I’m reading Masters of Doom); how I think that moving to San Diego will make me happy; why I have such an addictive personality; what am I trying to achieve?

I picked up this book for $5 called “There Is A Way Out”. It’s some inspirational shit from the 70′s that some guy named Vernon Howard wrote. It’s mostly a collection of dialogs, I’m assuming recorded and compiled from his lectures or whatever he used to do, with a 4 page guide at the beginning saying things like, “For building an inner confidence which nothing can shake: see page 94 REAL CONFIDENCE” or “How one man replaced painful self-conflict with peaceful self-unity: see page 132 MASKS”.

My favorite so far is “To rise above your present life to see a new world: see page 128 REAL HAPPINESS” which leads to:

REAL HAPPINESS
“How is real happiness attained?”
“By freeing yourself of thoughts about life. You have thoughts about how life should unfold, how people should treat you, how happiness can be won. These are your thoughts about life. But life cannot and will not obey your demanding thoughts, which makes you unhappy.”
“But what can I do but think about life?”
“You can see life.”
“How is this seeing attained?”
“By wanting seeing more than you want your demands upon life.”

Right under this one is another one (that is less nonsensical I suppose):

OBTAINMENTS
“I would be happy if I could just get what I want.”
“How many times in the past have you obtained what you wanted?”
“Many times.”
“Are you happy?”

A lot of this stuff is painfully obvious to me, and it’s painfully obvious how I have failed in the past when I look back it. I used to be ruled entirely by wants: how I wanted life to be, how I wanted people to react to me, the things I wanted to buy. I’m not going to say I’m ‘cured’ of this entirely (I think this is reserved monks who stand on floors in one spot while praying long enough their feet are worn into the wood) but the level of contention and stress in my life has significantly lessened once I stopped expecting people to act certain ways.

I’ve learned, over a few years now, that minimizing your wants is the true trick to happiness. I think people put a lot of stress on themselves when they idolize their desires to such an extreme. (Like being so into a movie star that you feel an actual longing for them as if you know them personally, or spending all your time thinking about expensive cars you will never own, beautiful women you will never bone.) Why do people spend a such a significant amount of time worshiping something they will never know?

I guess it’s just another form of religion. The religion of desire. Even when you finally do meet God and all your questions are answered, you just want a different God. It’s a never ending cycle of want and achieve, up and down, high and low, just like drugs, just like addiction. Hmm.

You’re all a bunch of want addicts. All of you. I blame you.

People are the same way. It’s so easy to spend all your time hoping that someone will react a certain way, just all on their own, without any prompting. You stress and pray and you talk to your friends about it and it all seems so ridiculous: you could end all the contemplation right now, by realizing that the only thing that can change your world is you.

REAL PERSON
“How long must I suffer like this?”
“For as long as you prefer to play the role of a real person instead of finding out how to be one.”

COMPLAINT
“Please discuss our many complaints.”
“One of the most difficult facts for a complainer to grasp is his own involvement in the very game he complains so much about. He is a fox who insists he is a lamb. If he were not a part of the game he would not suffer from it. A complainer who sees this will emerge from suffering.”

Fuckin’ rock and roll. What does any of it mean? I already know all this and I’m not happy! Fuck you Vernon, you don’t know me! YOU DON’T KNOW ME.

Song Note: This song is maybe about a werewolf who wants to be hunting caribou but instead he is trapped in a city and hates it a lot. Draw your own comparisons!