Clarity Can Kill Ya

I got a clear understanding of my life in the past month. Might be the source of the angst that has filled these pages.
I have cast my lot with the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission. Been humping and slinging booze for over a year now. Makes sense to just keep on keeping on. Too old, too tired to keep bouncing around. In the past six years I zipped from accounting to bar tending at the legion, from tending bar at the legion to tending bar at an inn and back to the legion. I zapped from the legion to working as a manager for a food distributor and back to the legion again. I zupped from the legion to The Booze Emporium, keeping a toe in the legion. Left the legion with finality and now I am a humble servant/employee exclusively of the NHSLC.
I began this searching at the age of 52. I am now 58. I am running out of time.
There is no security with the NHSLC. No dignity and no respect from upper management. But that would be true no matter where I went. Corporate america is what it is and there is no escaping it. So I have decided to ride this pony as far as it will take me. It's a paycheck and paychecks come in handy.
My brain is a strange bird and I am never happy where I am. I don't accept that this job is my destiny. While I am there I am thinking about how my life should be. How it could be. I have always been this way. This, of course, tortures me. The concepts of living in the Now and being grateful for what you have as opposed to mourning what you don't have, make sense to me. I understand that this is a recipe for happiness now. However, I have not been able to embrace these philosophies in my heart. Truthfully I believe these are dangerous points of view that allow you to accept mediocrity, to settle for your small life, to try to lessen your pain.
I prefer whiskey.
My endless unhappiness and discontent might be good for me. Motivators. I'm not sure. I have nothing to back this up with since I have achieved zero professional success and even less financial independence. But I recognize it for what it is and who I am and I will go with it.
I dragged a couple of cases of wine out to a woman yesterday and put them in the trunk of her Lincoln Continental. I wanted to knock her out and drive away in the car but I decided that strategy might not be fruitful. I am tired of humping booze out to Lincolns. I want the damn Lincoln.
The second and more important piece of my life's clarity is understanding that I am compelled to continue trying to earn money from writing. Hunter S. Thompson said that making a living from writing is a hard nut. He knew what he was talking about. The odds against me earning a little money from writing are astronomical. The odds against me earning a lot of money from writing are infinitely large. Deciding to be a writer is like deciding to be an actor or an athlete or a singer or an artist. A steep climb with huge rejection and little encouragement and only the faintest hope of reward. This piece of Joe-Life clarity is more painful than resigning myself to dancing with the liquor devil. All my efforts may end up in a box that my kids fill when I am but a memory. There is an excellent possibility that there will be no pay stubs in that box.
But it is what I love, I have a talent for it and I have to pursue this dream. Otherwise I have nothing.
So there you have it. My life reduced to simple clarity and harsh reality. Gambling on the liquor commission, and pursuing a dream that is almost guaranteed to fail and to break my heart. I have never viewed my life so clearly before and it is an odd feeling.
The two things I am pinning my future on are unreliable and likely to hurt me.
"Life should be fragrant. Rooftop to the basement." U2. The operative word there is Should. For the vast majority of people in the world, it is not.
Mine is not.
At this late stage, my life is bookended by the act of swallowing my pride and clinging to a dream.
"Nobody told me there'd be days like these. Strange days indeed." John Lennon