Calling AAA on the Road Less Traveled

My Achilles heel is regret. It can paralyze me. I’ve been working on it the last couple of years because there have been times I’ve thought that I might lose my mind from speculating. There have been many nights I’ve lay awake for hours carefully, thoughtfully, with great attention to detail, plotting how I might do things if I did them over again. What I’d change. What’d stay the same. Of course, it’s a silly thing, because experience and mistakes define us, teach us, so whatever decisions were made, I made to the best of my ability. For better or worse.

I guess what it comes down to for me is this incredible fear of reaching the end of my life and realizing that I did it wrong. I messed up. I wasted it. Nothing unusual there, I suppose. A lot of wondering comes down to a choice of path. There have been times, more than one, when I have been poised to go the path in pursuit of fame, of showiness. The agent in LA. As a touring comedian. So forth. I’ve turned away from that because I wanted to be a good person at my core, and I suspected that I would fall prey to superficiality, lose sight of myself that way. I wanted to do things that were morally right, that made a difference. I wanted to be an artist, not a celebrity. An artist, not a purveyor of panem et circenses. Was some of this fear of failure? Bullshit rationalization? I don’t know. I hope not. But the thing is that, literally, not a week goes by in which someone doesn’t ask why I’m living the life I do. When I explain that I don’t want to be on TV, the response I get, and have always gotten is, “But you could! You could be on TV!” Isn’t that interesting? Even people who claim to hate TV are almost angry at the prospect of a person who could have achieved that American dream and turned away from it.. That it’s idiocy. Lunacy. And I get scared. I get scared that they’re right. I get really scared that the path I’ve chosen isn’t one of service to others and artistic integrity, but one of mediocrity. Of under-achievement. It gets pretty hard to tell the difference between the righteous path and fucking up. I wish I had help, or a sign. Could call for roadside assistance on this winding road.