It's a profound thing to realize that the rest of the world is crazy, and you're the sane one.

Normally, this is considered to be proof positive that you yourself are, in actual fact, clinically insane, but hear me out before you decide not to listen to what I have to say.

It has been said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but to expect a different result. If this is the case, then the rest of the world, with some exceptions, is completely insane.
And I'm one of the exceptions.

I wasn't always exceptional in this way; I, like many of the rest of you, once had a regular job, rent, car payment, all the trappings of a life in america for a twenty-something who went from high school straight into the work force.

But something happened to me that changed all that, and changed it, I feel, for the better. I reached a point in my life where I went absolutely out of my mind. If it had not been for many years of practice at exercising cast iron self restraint, I would not be typing this. In short, I reached a revelation: all the things I was doing were keeping me alive, but nothing more. I was sustaining my own existence, barely, but everything I was doing to sustain myself was only going to continue sustaining me, never change anything for the better. It hit me like a ton of bricks. All the things I wanted out of life, dreamed about doing, had dreamed of doing since childhood, were never, EVER going to happen. I had forgotten what FUN was. I had forgotten what JOY meant. I was not alive. I was a corpse that hadn't quite died yet.

I had reached the point where I had to make a choice. A choice between actually living or being very, very dead. I was no longer going to be able to merely exist once this hit me; I was going to do something quite drastic one way or another. Evolve or die; and take as much of the bullshit world with me as I could in the process. Considering where I worked at the time, a large gas station, that would probably have been quite a lot.

It took being pushed to the breaking point to make the right choice, or to make any choice at all, and that's a sorry state of affairs. When an obviously insane system has to fail that dramatically for a person to recognize it for what it is, and even then most people don't, ladies and gentlemen, that is a PROBLEM.
Am I alone in thinking along these lines?

Even just choosing the harder road and following what makes you genuinely happy before reaching that point is a significant achievement. But it's so easy, and every generation for over a hundred years has been making it so much easier, to follow the path to self-destruction. Think about what you're bombarded with day in and day out, all the things you're being told to wear, eat, drink, smoke, buy. All the things that are bad for you, they're cheap, brightly packaged, and readily available. All the things that are good for you are expensive, subdued, and honestly a little difficult even to locate. You have to work much, much harder to do the things that, ultimately, will be most rewarding: a life of physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological health takes so much work that it's practically a fantasy. But the 'american dream' will kill you.
It. Will. Kill. You.

What I'm saying is not popular. Hell, I wish it were, because if it were popular then maybe people would make the difficult, but the right, decision. They would stop submitting to the insanity and commit to the arduous road to recovering from it.

I made a decision four years ago to stop being crushed by the weight of the drone machine and start doing what I have known in my heart my entire life was what I wanted to do, and what would make me happiest as a person, something that I am loathe to think of myself as because of the stigmas impressed upon me from the time I was old enough to use language just because I'm different. I am proud to say that even though it took being pushed to the point of evolution or death, and even though I've done more than my share of complaining about how hard it's been, that I have NO REGRETS about choosing to pursue a life of genuine, heartfelt self-expression and creativity instead of being integrated into the system, just another copper-top battery in the machine being bled to death before my time.

Please, don't let yourself be pushed to that point.

I'm restating my commitment today, as a matter of personal desire and spontaneous inspiration, not just for myself, but in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, someone will listen.

I haven't been doing my best to follow my chosen path. I have been lax, and I've strayed far more than I care to admit. But I'm committing right now for everyone who actually cares to read this that that will no longer be the case. Anything worth doing is worth fighting for. Starting right now, I'm fighting again. I have all the weapons I need.

YOU HAVE ALL THE WEAPONS YOU NEED.

Are you living a life that's worth using them to defend it?

I haven't been. A fact that I sorely regret. But there is still breath in me and I am going to start fighting for a life worth living.

Starting now.