Ghosts

I've become a ghost of myself. At various points over the last few years, I've kinda wondered where I've gone.

I don't seem -- at least to myself -- to have the same spark, the same joie de vivre I remember from my youth.

I see it in my writing, becoming obsessed, as I have, with the struggles of getting by, of being poor, of the conflict between having what I've always wanted -- the life of a working actor -- and missing the things sacrificed for that goal; the creature comforts I so enjoy. I'll be the first to admit that I miss being able to just go out and have dinner on the town without even giving it a second thought.

Nostalgia is a tricky thing, though. It is -- like much of memory -- essentially a lie. A re-organization of the facts to make the present more palatable by giving me something to look back upon fondly. A suggestion that the present is somehow an aberration, that the past was good, now is somehow not, and the future will be good again.

I'm talking about me here, not you. I don't pretend to know what's going on in your head. Though it seems to me it's, if not universal, a widespread belief. If it's not, how do people who use that logic keep getting elected to high office?

Anyway. I'm learning -- sometimes it's annoying how painfully slowly I seem to be doing it -- that I'm not the man I used to be. There's no way I could be. There's no way I should want to be. That man was young and cute, yes, but he was also kinda stupid, and callous, and even more self-involved than I am now, hard as that is to imagine.

So here's to the present. Here's to growing. Here's to not being the man you were. Here's to saying goodbye to ghosts.