josh Allan

I’ll be coming home from my vacation in two days.

I gotta admit, I’m pretty upset by that fact, today.

It’s probably a rare getaway when one says at the end: “Wow, I am so ready to return.” Unfortunately this trip cannot go in that category, either.

It’s not that I don’t want to go back because I’m trying to escape my life or something, though. Sadly, it almost feels like by going back I’m deciding to deliberately squander a good deal of my talent. Going back feels like acquiescing, like giving in. Like surrendering to the path of least resistance, taking the easy way out, or some other mindless cliche.

That’s just it, actually: it feels incredibly cliche to go back. Go back to where it’s “easy,” where I have a place to live, where I rent a house filled with shit I don’t use (but just might someday!!!), where I have cars I can’t afford, where I get a mediocre-at-best paycheck for expending an inordinate amount of energy into a project that may never reach its potential.

Aren’t vacations supposed to refresh you? To reinvigorate you about your life, bring you back with a renewed passion for “jumping back in!” or something? Damn.

I want to say that I refuse to sit on the shore and watch my life sail idly by… but but that wouldn’t be me anymore. The me of yesterday, of a couple years ago, could say things like that and believe them. The me of today knows that life is, sadly, much more difficult than just idyllic expatiation. That saying mighty incendiary words will not, in themselves, create anything but unrest — which, though powerful, cannot actually solve anything. Catalyze, yes, but never solve. To quote the mighty philosophers The Prodigy, “I am the firestarter.”

So, I’ll be back in Palmdale on Tuesday night. I’ll go back to my house, my shit, my cars, my job, and hope beyond all hope that I can figure out what the hell to do from there.