Are any of us special anymore?

My computer is loading at the tedious pace of a stoned Vermonter contemplating which album to play before turning on the psychedelic strobe light and wandering into the smog filled regions of the mind.

The plan has hit me and I am growing into an anxious, excited, and fearful beast whose confidence is being slammed down by the story of every dreamer who is forgotten after living the dream. It is now only months before I go. I'm not sure where it will be or why it must happen. What I do know is that I am leaving the frost filled valley in Vermont that I have come to call home.

Years ago, during the time when my mind thought it was developing into a unique system of logic and passion, I found my home amongst the suburban dreams of northern New Jersey. I'll get famous. They'll all want to see my smiling face. And I'll always take the time to sign an autograph or two. Since then I have dreamt and failed, loved and lost, grown and sat back down to where comfort is waiting with a conniving glance that says it is a friend forever.

I'm less naive. I think. Still, there is a bit of me, maybe muddled now with so much time to think, that believes I can do something that so many try do, with honest intention, and fail, or succumb to a life that is less about love and more about plans. Its strange to think about all of those before me who have left and come back with the belief that they took a shot at the dream. They survive in a smile because they can say, "At least I tried."

I'm not sure what the dream is, or where I'll find it. I don't know if I will and all of these questions whose answers lag far behind just top the growing list of "things I don't know". There's captain crunch cereal on my desk, a psychology book about developmental case studies, and an ashtray full of camels and Marlboros. I know that. I can see it. Is everything that is known able to be seen?

Great. Another question without an answer. As if I don't know enough already. Maybe the travels I plan on taking will only grow the expanse in my mind between knowing and wonder. I'm lost momentarily but grounding myself in the amenities of my apartment helps me regain control. Time for a cigarette and more cold black coffee. It's the second cup, or third, but the caffeine is lifting me out of the dismal February mindset that has threatened my life in years past. Time to grow. Time to change. Time to understand that the future is almost here while the present is still pretending to exist.

I can't wrap my mind around it. What will happen when I go? I'll be without much money, if I have any at all, and where will I go? I say I'm heading south, down to Key West, to the backyard of Hemingway where I'll set up a tent covered in flowers and pretend to be another one of the cats roaming his garden. Then what? Well, maybe a coffee shop has some nice baristas, or a bar has some friendly servers who will take me home for the night and provide me with a bed, as though that is what I'll be looking for. The real wonder is whether or not I'll find the social situations that I have required throughout my life to define who I am at any given moment.

For years I have had families wherever I go. There have always been the old friends that answer the phone to my tear filled requests for their company or those willing to listen momentarily to my desires for death. That, I'll always have. A phone card or a collect call, and I'm able to indulge in my own bullshit sadness once again. What I yearn for is to find that in the strangers that I meet.

What if a man on the street sees inside of me what so many claim to feel when I'm around them? What if I am special? What if I am unique? What if I am willing to indulge in a path less taken? What if this path is the same for all of us who wonder too much for our own good? I'm not sure if the strangers will agree with my friends, or if I'll even be able to hide my tent in Hemingway's small garden. I'm not sure if I'll even be able to afford a tent.

Good songs playing loudly on a stereo projected through open airways created by rolled down windows and a leg sticking awkwardly out the freshly carved sunroof, this will happen. What won't is just another thing that I have to wait for. I'm waiting now, leaving the present in the past, and letting the anxiety of what will be come because it fills me with excitement. I might do this and that, but whatever it is I'll do it. I think.

Well, fuck thinking and walking around without a plan. I am still a few short months away from graduating college, a feat which so many said I could never accomplish. If I don't ground myself for more than a moment, I'll forget about the necessary work of now and never graduate at all. That would be a pity. Or would it?

I've dropped out twice, been broke and wealthy, been lost and found, but I've never left my second home for more than a few months. It's time to go and never come back. Tomorrow is another day closer to the spring sun and the final moments of yearning before I hit the gas pedal of the old dented civic and blast my way out of Vermont for the last time. There are so many people here that I love, so many friends in New Jersey that have saved me from myself, and so much I need to still learn about the man I really am or the one that I have been pretending to be. Lost in the mind but home in a moment. I'll go where I need to go, regardless of whether or not it makes me special. The experiences may not make it to the pages of the book I have waited to write, but they will be something, and provide some use. I know that.

How will my parents understand? What about the woman who has captured my heart with her rhythmic passion and wonderful eyes? Will any of them understand why I am gone? Will I? I question the need to go constantly, but I can't deal with the thought of staying. There is a whole world out there that I've been waiting to see. Maybe I won't have money, or a place to stay, but through out the journey I'll be looking for the home that I find on rare occasions when the sun is up high or the darkness lasts for days. The home of the mind, the one we find inside of ourselves, the one that gives us everything we need no matter where we are. That is what I will look for, and, as of now, I have only one primary objective: Make the world smile by being an inspiration to the strangers and friends. So many have said it couldn't be done, and those are the ones I owe the most to. If everyone said things were easy, if no one had traveled to write and spread passion before, and everyone was supportive all along, I'd be bored as shit with the idea of searching for something that I'm not sure even exists.

I'm willing to deal with a moment of happiness, or at least a breath of relief, but I am not done indulging in my delusions of grandeur. Maybe it's a symptom of the mental illness they say I have, or perhaps it's the keen awareness that I am going for it, no matter what, regardless of what form it takes. It can happen. This is America, the home of the American dream, and the place where everyone thinks their so damn special they post their entire lives on the web for all to see.

Let's indulge together. Let's believe that our self expression is worth it. Let's believe, no matter how wrong it may be, that we can change the world. I wonder what would happen if we lived and believed in the dream. Vermont has given me solace and pain, like the unforgiving suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, but all of those experiences have become me. Thanks to Vermont, to the world at large, to New Jersey for it's sense of entitlement and it's drive for an unreal sense of success, to the friends of today, the brothers of yesterday, and the inspiration of those mad enough to call themselves great.

Maybe I will be great. Maybe next February will see me in a far different place than I could ever imagine. Still, I'm here now, and there is work to do. Writing of a different sort must fill the rest of my day and replace the relaxation of a cold Sunday night. It's time to work. No more rest. No more waiting. Dive headfirst into this experience and all the others will work out. I'll try to let you all know what I'm doing more often by regularly writing in my blog because, as I said, I'm still happily stuck in the belief that I am special. I suggest you do the same.