Doesn’t feel much different, honestly.

For those who don’t know, today is my 41st birthday. Yay me! It was exactly 41 years ago, at around 10 AM, that a little redheaded baby named Michael was born to Larry and Betty Bertrand of 135 Belmont Street, Summerside, Prince Edward Island, at the Prince County Hospital.

The bouncing baby boy was a surprise to the Bertrands, as they already had three children and had not been planning on a fourth. Indeed, Betty had opted for tubal ligation surgery years before, but Michael somehow managed to defy the odds and get conceived anyhow, and nine months later, he made his debut.

At this point, while he is bright and shiny and new, Michael will be the center of attention for much of his days and he will, in his own shy way, glory in the attention and acceptance of his family.

However, Larry and Betty assure us that they will begin to ignore and neglect him the minute they realize that they have better things to do like jobs and hobbies and raising the planned kids.

Not that I’m bitter.

I was going to do a “where am I in life?” type column today, but I am thinking that would only lead to being very depressed. Truth is, I am exactly where I have been for twenty long fucking year : just some over-intelligent putz sitting in front of his computer, wasting his life with the Internet and video games.

Don’t worry, folks, I always get really emotional on my birthday. I’m just venting.

I just get so god damned tired of this life of mine, the life I can’t seem to escape. I want to have fun and live life and get some passion and joie de vivre. But no matter my ambition, I just end up doing the same shit I always do and the days of my life tick past and I get closer and closer to the grave and an end to a meaningless, purposeless life.

And on some level, I understand that seeing things that way is part of why I can’t escape this trap. Finding my life so depressing, I avoid thinking about it, and if you can’t think about it, you certainly can’t do anything about it.

I feel trapped in a vast Rube Goldberg device of overlapping, interconnected avoidant cycles that, together, form the perfect machine for turning every bit of energy or desire I have into force to hold me down.

I built that machine. It’s my own creation. I designed a machine to keep myself constantly in check, so that no matter what I think about doing or want to do or totally COULD do, nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes.

I want to be able to clear the logjam by simply taking the pressure out of the system and letting things fall where they may. The blockage stops being a blockage if you just stop pushing on it, in a sense.

But I don’t think I can do that yet. I have too much latent dynamic energy craving release to just let go yet. Resolving the inner conflict that way is not in the cards for me yet.

So I will continue feeling frustrated at the pointlessness of my life for a while. I have a lot of things that I need to work out first. A lot of issues that have been piling up on my front porch.

It makes it hard to have a Happy Birthday. Turning 41 just reminds me of how I have wasted yet another year of my life doing sweet fuck all except mental masturbation exercises like this blog. Sure, I love talking to you people, and I can’t imagine how pointless my days would seem without it, but it is not exactly getting me anywhere.

And I have so much I want to give to the world. Despite my self-loathing, I am very confidant in my abilities. I know that I am a funny guy with a talent for words and a crackling wit, not to mention loads of brains. I am a nice guy who really cares about people, sensitive and gentle and kind. I am not totally ugly.

And yet, none of that adds up to being confident in myself. Despite all those tools, I have no confidence in the person wielding them. I try to truly imagine engaging with life, without the filtering effects of fantasy and idealism, and it fills me with terror and dread. The world is so big and I am so small and I feel like I can only be safe if it doesn’t notice me.

If I stay out of life’s way, it won’t step on me. Right?

And yet at the same time, I burn with ambition. I want to do so much. I want to go out into the world and prove how brilliant I am and what an extraordinary person I am. I feel like in the right circumstances, I could be absolutely magic.

It is finding those circumstances and getting to them that poses the problem.

When I try to think about my life and make plans to change it, a terrible anxiety rises up in me and makes it extremely difficult to concentrate. I guess that is how my depression protects itself.

Oh well. Every day, I get a little stronger, a little healthier, a little lighter of spirit. Some day, I will reach the tipping point where I can just empty my soul of all the bad stuff and walk away from it all, unburdened and healthy and clean.

But before that happens, I have ever so many ghosts to defeat. I have this big wide white wound in me that bleeds darkness and daylight and pure fucking poison to heal. I have a long long journey into my own heart to complete.

Until then, I will just have to try to be patient and remember that I am a very ill person doing his best to convalesce.

In other words… happy birthday to me.

Talk to you again tomorrow, folks!