I know I'm not the first person to have learned some kind of lesson regarding letting one thing get in the way of another. In fact, my stories are cliché. I've heard a ton of musicians say the same thing I do about gear getting in the way of creativity, and I've known many people who have had the same motivation problems finding work and just managed to get lucky right before the money ran out. For me to think that my stories are unique or examples of the very worst is hubris.

Once I spent a night in a psychiatric ward. I had checked myself in. It was probably the right thing to do at the time, but within an hour of being there I was very angry with myself. It was humiliating to be allowed to listen to my iPod only with supervision. It was humiliating to be given my medication in a paper cup and to have to open my mouth after I swallowed to prove to the staff member that I had actually taken it.

I met a man there who introduced himself as God. He was missing an ear, and by the looks of the scar where it used to be, it was pretty clear that it had been sliced off with a razor, and that the perpetrator hadn't used anything remotely resembling a steady hand wielding the instrument. My guess is that God's surgery was DIY.

The next day I bugged every staff member I could find to get me the fuck out of there. I finally spoke to the psychiatrist who happened to be on duty at the time. The doctor told me I needed to loosen up on myself. That's actually what he said. "Loosen up on yourself." I could have punched the fucker.

He said, "Oh, you play the guitar? You should try using that as a way to relax yourself," and I told him I couldn't play any more because I felt like I never had anything to play and it just frustrated me. He said "Loosen up on yourself, and just play." I said, "I have nothing to play," and he said, "then play nothing." I got a little miffed and asked what "play nothing" even meant, and he said "I play the guitar too. If you like the blues, I'm pretty sure that nothing is in A and is mostly the minor pentatonic scale with a flat fifth. If you like rock, it's probably in E. If you like country it's in G and uses the major pentatonic scale."

It was one of the most unexpected things I ever heard from a doctor, even in Nashville, and I was so surprised by it that I completely forgot I wanted to hit him.

The only other thing I remember him saying to me was that he was going to discharge me that day. He said the reason he thought I was fine to go was because I clearly did not want to be there. He said, "If you really don't want to stay here, that's a pretty clear indication that you're sane."

I have only recently realized that he probably wasn't joking at all.

I write this stuff down in a public forum because that's the kind of person I am. I am often performing even when I'm trying to figure out why life is what it is. I don't really think I'm so wise as to have some amazing revelation that will change the life of the people who may one day read this. I like the idea that I might, and part of the performance is trying to seem that confident, but I don't believe it myself, and there are things I've written that embarrass the shit out of me for trying to sound deeper than they really are.

I know I can sometimes pull off a story with a little grace, and I know I might end up saying more than I realized I was saying, but really all I'm ever doing is working out my own brain. Perhaps it's nothing more than egotism. Perhaps it's that my self-esteem is as low as it's ever been, and I'm still dying to impress people and hoping that I'll write something that elicits some praising comments.

Most of the time when I write like this, I have had some epiphany that I am dying to share. I usually feel like I've moved forward. If there's anything humbling in what I'm saying, it's only the admission that the way I looked at things before the epiphany was idiotic and that I can see that now and am amazed I couldn't see it before. I can totally spin that, and I have.

This time that's not what I'm doing at all. You'd think the epiphany is that everything in life is about freeing yourself from worry or letting go of one chunk of distractions to be able to do something else, but it's not. I don't know what I think about that shit any more. There's some usefulness in thinking that way, but when you really don't have the motivation it's too fucking easy to beat yourself up with guilt because you don't have it. I do it. Many people I know do it too.

So what's better? Making up a song like a kid without worry about how it will turn out? Loosening up on yourself and playing nothing? Cleaning your desk and then your apartment to avoid working on your resume and writing cover letters? Living with the stress of not having a job as long as you possibly can so you have time to actually make up songs like a kid? Working really hard knowing that you'll forfeit other things in life so you never have to worry about the roof over your family's head? I don't know the answer. It seems like it's all of them and none of them depending what day it is or who you are.

And I don't think I've decided who I am.

I eventually got out of the worst place I've ever been emotionally. I eventually got back to a place that I could more easily navigate. I eventually regained some confidence in myself after admitting that I needed medication to think straight and after thinking straight long enough to realize that I'd learned how to cope with the world in a way that destroyed relationships and blamed everyone else for things that were my fault.

It took years for me to gain that confidence, and a lot of it was gained by building my own little version of pop psychology to explain myself to myself and to justify the way I am to myself. I do know that my meds help me think straight and that without them I'm of no use to myself let alone anybody else. I'm not even tempted to stop taking them again. However, I have started to realize that my feeling like psychopharmacology solved my problems is at best an overstatement.

I still have no idea what I'm doing here. I still make egregious errors in judgment. I still cope in ways that destroy. I am often still as selfish as I was when I was 16. All I've done is filter that selfishness through a lot more rationalization and observations. Now I'm armed with more knowledge about mental illness and mood swings and such. I just keep adding rules to explain why I am not doing the right thing instead of doing it, and I think I'm mostly doing that because it's easier than doing it.

The man named God with one ear was somebody's roommate the night I stayed in the ward. I thought I had gotten lucky by ending up in a room by myself, but I don't know any more. Perhaps if I'd had a conversation with him from the twin bed across the room, I might not have spent so many years storming out the door with my half finished resume and cover letter when it's painfully obvious that I need to clean my desk and my apartment first.

The only kind of optimistic thing about this is that I really don't want to stay where I am. If that means I'm sane, then it appears I've only been sane a few times in almost 33 years.

what's on:
"I'm Just Beginning to Live" (Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Rockin' and Romance)