Being There........

Well, folks, it seems that my quest for fame and fortune has come to naught, and naught is not the kind of place I really wanted to hang my shingle. Once, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper (must have been some pretty damn big grasshoppers back then), I had this wild idea that I was going to become a crew member of the Calypso, that ship that Jacque Coustou sailed to all those exotically wet places. I've never even been certified in scuba. Such is accomplishment and wild dreams.

I think I know what went wrong. First, I was not born with the innate knowledge necessary to accomplish my dreams. Secondly, I had no one to mentor me in the direction I thought I wanted to go. Hey, I was new to life, not having lived one before that I could remember at the time, what can I say? And last, but certainly not least, I had many more people telling me what I COULDN'T do than I had telling me what I COULD do. If it wasn't for my "fuck-you, I show YOU what I can't do" attitude, I wouldn't have even learned how to swim or type or steer a nuclear submarine through the icy depths of a hostile ocean. You sometimes end up where fate feels comfortable you being.

We like to think we have choices, and that we make bad ones and good ones. I would like to suggest that sometimes having choices is rather irrelevant if one has no earthly idea what choices are available to them. You always hear how someone already successful took someone "under their wing" and taught them how to navigate the path to success, if they cared to listen. Well, I used to listen alot, but frankly, no one was talking to me. No one really gave a shit. I was on my own and I had to simply do the best I could relying on my own wits and luck.

So, am I complaining, attempting to lay the blame on someone other than myself for where I now find myself in life? Hell no. I was just unfortunate in some ways, but I was also incredibly lucky in others. I survived, and I cannot lay claim to having suffered all that much for the journey I ended up taking to get here. Yes, there are those who got in my way and made my life more difficult than it needed to be, but then again, there were those who extended a helping hand right when I needed it most, and although these "rescues" merely got me back on my feet and nothing more, I think that was about the best I could have ever hoped for, and I am as grateful to those kind souls for what they did for me as I could possibly be.

Then, there was love. Love is an incredibly hard thing to find in this world when you are not built by Mother Nature to win any battles of genetic superiority. I was not tall, I was not muscular, I was not all that agile, and I COULD have been a bit better looking (having to wear glasses did NOT help any). I was not the success story most damsels seek in their suitors, so my conquests in the field of Romance were not won against any real competition, if any. But find love I did, and when one is getting laid, or simply loved, that is all that really matters.

Many a decade has passed since I was brought into this world, and I find myself nowhere near anyplace I might have imagined myself to be at the ripe old age of..........well, let's just say I have had to celebrate my 45th for seven years now. I seem to be stuck where I am, and thus I find solace in writing and reading and working for a paycheck, rather than commanding the next Mars mission as any intelligent, innovative, daring soul such as myself should REALLY be doing. But I do know ONE thing. This may be my lot in life, but it's a damn fine lot, and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, will ever play this part as well as I have. I am and always will be the most natural Michael you will ever hope to meet, or see played on the page of a blog. And I, THE Michael, will pass away from NATURAL causes, not pharmaceutical ones. Unless you count one screwdriver too many.........