If You Gots The Struggles

The struggles, man…they’re real. Call it "first world problems,” but they’re real, aren’t they? We think of real, day to day suffering, like those displaced people in Gaza—how can you give your problems the time of day? But they exist…don’t they?

I’ve got three and a half hours before I gotta leave for work—

Hey, I’m gonna let you see behind this door, this little door. Yeah. it’s real bone, you like it? Uh, well, it’s the door to my skull, sunshine, hear the clank of iron skeleton keys on a iron ring. Here we go, story time:

At work, there is this Asian guy in his late twenties. He works in valet parking, always neat in a sports jacket and driving cap. Guy is serious at work which I appreciate as I am serious at work, as well. The other kids his age out in valet are shooting the shit, looking at their phones during the down time. Not Driving Cap, he’s always sweeping or doing something constructive. So, in my head, he’s been raised to be this very disciplined person, that everything we do deserves respect, that wasting a single day is a crime. Not just for getting work done, but for this appreciation of all the simple yet glorious thing like flowers in Spring. So…I am kinda hashing out this song lyric sorta thing called Chinese Driving Cap. The Chinese or Asian part is just a detail, but the Voice—as we’ll call the thing that sorta guides my creative inclinations—tells me it is a detail that needs to be in the title of this song lyric or poem because, you guessed it, there’s a backstory. I think Driving Cap has a grandmother. Driving Cap’s parents are fully Americanized, they were born here, they have a Costco membership, SUV, and everything, but Driving Cap sees their life as sorta hollow. Maybe grandma was born in the US, as well, maybe she came over as a small child—to escape Mao’s Revolution? But grandma is still very in touch with her Chinese culture—

My ex-wife used to get angry with me when I’d go off in tangents like this. Dunno, maybe she was kind of right, but it also sort of broke my heart that she never seemed to understand/appreciate/respect how my mind works.

I can see how she was right: I should be focused on finding another job right now or something to move life forward….

On the other hand….I often feel like I’ve been put in touch with something very special. I can just pick up an instrument or sit behind this laptop and create. This whole story about Driving Cap’s family just…it’s there, and I can just sorta tune into it.

I resent having to spend time and energy working normal jobs because—let’s face it—I’ve got around twenty years left if I’m lucky. I want to make the most of whatever time I have left to utilize this gift or whatever it is—

But I’ve never been at the right place at the right time, had the right story or song or whatever—

So I have to be a delivery driver or a admin or a security guard or whatever I have to do to pay the bills.

This is where someone interjects, “First world problems!” and rightfully so.

I think this one root of the anger I have: Why can I do this level of creative stuff but I can’t survive off it? I’m not talking “getting rich,” I have no interest in that aside from it could help people in my life, I’m talking enough money to live simply. It makes no sense…and I have to tune out a whole lot of stories or song lyrics or whatever so I can focus on whatever gig pays my bills but—

I’ve gone on about this too much. This is my war, and it’s trivial in light of people who have to watch their children die of cancer or any number of things…but I can feel it wearing me down. Twenty years…if I’m lucky.

Now I’ve got three hours until work, I need to do all sorts of adulting. Maybe tomorrow when I have a “day off”—(you know why that’s in quotation marks, don’t ya, fellow adults?)—I’ll work on the Chinese Driving Cap thing. There’s scope to it, I can’t fully explain the weird Thought Salad I’m sort of plucking it out of, but it’s about life and beauty and….whatever. If I pull it off it will be in the sixth book of song lyrics.

Until then...