I haven't got a bloody dime to my name.

I live with my mother.

I live way out in the middle of nowhere, with the only contact with other people my age being visits to Wal-mart and through the Internet.

I don't have many friends.

I'm a high-school dropout.

People constantly tell me that I'll never amount to anything.

But I'm happy.

I'm happy. I enjoy what I do with my life--namely, thinking. Feeling. Observing. My mission in life is not to earn money and become trapped in an endless race on a rat wheel, searching endlessly for fulfillment through gas-guzzling automobiles and through go-nowhere relationships set up for the sake of mere companionship rather than any real, deep affection and passion.

I'm perfectly content to sit on the roadside, perched on someone's fence, watching traffic go past. I'm perfectly content to sit outside on a blanket, making jewelry, writing stories. I'm perfectly content to daydream my life away. I'm perfectly content with seeking meaning and fulfillment through my dreams, thoughts, and relationships with the only people I really NEED--me, God, and God's many various manifestations throughout the world.

It's when I'm doing what's normal that I become a nervous fucking wreck, that I become depressed and discouraged. It's when I try to drive somewhere--I become inattentive, panicked, and start sobbing uncontrollably into the steering wheel. It's when I hear "get a job!" or "grow up!" from my peers--I withdraw into my shell and lash out at whoever told me to do so. It's when I imagine the prospect of getting a white-collar job and living in a house by myself and paying bills--I panic and feel angry and bored, even though this has never happened.

I'm dissatisfied with the ambitions that everybody else has built up for me. I'm dissatisfied with the lonely time in which I live--I'm unhappy that everybody is so... isolated. Everybody thinks they can make it on their own, that they're okay by themselves, and they shut themselves off from their neighbors. Nobody helps. People walk through their lives on autopilot, only jarring into semi-wakefulness when they see something that's not blended into the background blur of their lives.

I don't want the life everybody else wants for me. I don't want to make the climb, like "Jerry" says in the Woodstock movie. There's nothing to climb for. He was right. I can sit down on the roadside, and all I want and need is there. I've got higher aspirations, higher goals, more important things to do than earn money and eke out the same existence my father and mother and the rest of my family do.

And that's what I want to do. My aspirations are strange, I'll admit--I want to do the kind of work Meher Baba did, the kind of work Jesus did, the kind of work that the great peacebringers of years past have done. I want a very simple, roving life. I don't want a mere existence; I don't want to merely occupy space miserably, the way Dad and Karen do. I want to LIVE! I want to move, I want to live out my dreams, I want to take charge, and I want to awaken others from their stupor.

Nobody else wants me to do it. That discourages me sometimes. My Internet-friends tell me that it's a stupid idea (though they're slightly more civil in wording it, the intent and tone is the same). My family demands that I go for a job that will pay everything my brother isn't earning; they want me to earn gobs of money and pay for an easy cruise through the rest of their lives. And this discourages me. Nobody believes in my dreams except for me. Nobody agrees with me. Nobody even disagrees with me in a respectful tone.

But I'll find some way to make them see that this is my life and I'm in control. And that there's more to their lives than miserable existence.

Because that's what I'm going to do with my life. Whether anybody else likes it or not.