There are some things I understand. This is not one of them.

I guess I've always been...well, what you might call generous with money.

Really I'm not actually, I'm very cheap, almost stingy. At least, that's how I feel. But it's never bothered me to pay for a round, or to do the driving so no one else has to pay for gas, or to get the check at dinner or something like that. I don't think it's a good thing, I'm not proud of it, it's just how I am I guess.

I'm especially not proud of it when I think about the reasons behind it. I think first and foremost, I just don't really care too much for money ('cuz money can't buy me love). Seriously though, I worry about money sometimes, but I don't know, I feel like it's better to be generous with it now and make people happy than to hoard it all for yourself so that you can be happy down the road.

Unfortunately, another reason I'm maybe a little more willing to spend money on people is that I don't know of other ways to properly display affection. We're not just talking romantic affection here either, I mean to show friends I appreciate them, family that I care about them, anything like that. It's the easy way out. I don't have to think about it. I have money, they need money. Me spending money on them = me showing I care.

It's like giving someone money on their birthday. It's a cop-out. I want people to like me, and since I'm not quite as funny, not quite as intelligent, and not quite as charismatic as your average earthworm, I have to find other ways of making people happy, which results in them liking me. In my mind at least.

I try to find other ways too, being there to talk, making mix cd's, buying little gifts I know they want (again with the money thing there...), that sort of thing...taking out the trash, running errands... I dunno...

Lately it kind of seems to have been pissing people off though... which confuses me a little bit....unless I'm one of those jerks who buys everyone's dinner and then makes sure they all know how generous he is...or bitches about having so little money or something....God I hope I'm not that guy.

So, I guess, if I buy you food or something, don't get mad at me. And whatever you do, don't ever feel like you owe me. Maybe that's what it is, I know I hate feeling like I'm in someone's debt...I want to repay them for whatever it is they did...Well, you never have to feel like you're in my debt. You should just feel special, because it means I like you, and I hope that you like me too. It means that in my awkward, roundabout way, I'm doing what I can to make you happy, in return for how happy you (my friends) make me. That's all. I feel like I get a lot more out of my friendships than my friends do, you guys make me really happy, and I want to do whatever I can to make you happy too.

And if it's just plain offensive and I need to stop, tell me that. I don't wanna be a jerk.

Thanks for reading,

loren

The good...that won't come out.

Do you ever feel as though greatness lies just beyond your reach?

Your arms outstretched, your fingers extended, grasping blindly in the darkness of mediocrity...

I feel that way. Perhaps it's denial, my desire to see worth in my self and in what I do.

I don't know, and I'm not un-biased enough to analyze my motivations, all I know is how I feel.

I feel as though I'm plodding along in the various areas I apply myself creatively; music, photography, writing...I know that my output is sub-par for the most part, perhaps average from time to time.

I don't fancy myself a Mozart, a Lennon, a Bresson, a Van Gogh, an Escher, a Wells. I don't even see myself as one of the millions of creatives who fly just under the radar their whole lives, doing well enough in their craft to make a living, but never quite attaining wide recognition.

I have no delusions of grandeur in that sense.

However.

I can't shake the feeling that...somewhere inside me (perhaps yet to be brought to light through the hardships of life?), somewhere there is greatness. The feeling that, if I continue to try, and practice, and study, and create, that eventually, something good will come of it, that I will, if not hit my stride and start outputting genuine art, perhaps at least I'll find my "One Hit Wonder".

Like I said, maybe it's just that I have to believe there is greatness in me to stave off despair at my current sad state. Perhaps it's that I refuse to believe that I would be created with this intense of a desire to succeed and be denied the talent. Maybe it's that I've heard from enough people who say they made it through hard work and struggle instead of naturally in-born skill.

Maybe it's not even that I lack the talent, maybe it's my complacency, my fear of change, my trepidation of baring my inner self in the way art requires to the outside world. I've never liked criticism, I've never thought enough of my own work to proudly display it.

Maybe I just lack the ambition. I feel like there are open doors, and I ignore them, or make up excuses to not take the options laid before me.

The door is unlocked, but the distance is simply to great for me to traverse, the handle simply too large for me to grasp, the door too heavy to open, and the threshold too small for me to enter.

I feel that I have greatness within me, I pray for the courage to find it, and to let it out.