One year left

Today is my 29th birthday, the celebration of almost three decades of deep mediocrity. When you're thirty, it's no longer cute to be muddled. Thus I have one year left to at least put myself in some direction.

At 29, I'm a right-thinking Catholic frequently deeply lacking in right-action. Sitting out Communion once or twice a month is no fun. My confessors sometimes think me overscrupulous about it, but no one ever went to Hell for not receiving the Sacrament. They sure have for doing it unworthily.

At 29, 70% of my income goes to debt reduction: House, car, student loans, two failed entrepeneurial ventures, and the only really frivolous purchase I've ever made, a king-size bed. At least I never got bitten by the credit card bug. I'm not going backwards or forwards, and I look to be treading water for the forseeable future.

At 29, I've never had a job I've found satisfying or interesting for more than 20 hours a week. I almost completely lack the "reward system" in my brain for my career. I find war games satisfying, also a good liturgy, reading, and of course the guinea pigs, but I just can't get excited about working for other people, and have no inherent interest in the wealth it generates, qua wealth. If I didn't need to eat and pay my debts, I could really sit around all day in holey socks on my porch and read and smoke cigars and drink coffee.

And then there are those issues that have even less place on a public blog than the above do. But we'll just leave them be.

At 30, one year from today, if I am still so deeply, mournfully, painfully mediocre, I may just start popping out kids (which is another thing overdue), collect public assistance, and really just sit around all day doing nothing. Sell the house, get a dirty apartment, sit on the stoop, and let the welfare checks buy nuggets for my guinea pigs, and generic mac-and-cheese for my ten kids.

But it's the "on-the-fence" of it that kills me. Rich and poor are happy where they are because they are sure of their position. They know what they are, and they are content, even the ones who won't admit it. I've got impressive wealth and ghetto poverty in my extended family and both sides really do know they belong there. It's the particular agony of the middle class to see wealth and see destitution and know that things really could go either way.

Even worse, I'm also "middle-class" spiritually. I can see myself being a saint, and I can see myself dragged off to Hell. It's enough to drive one to drink (more), but that'd just be another thing to confess. And I have no excuses, save for a proven familial streak of "the crazies;" I'm too well-educated to plead ignorance before The Lord.

So if you could spare a prayer for me today (and my wife), I would be much obliged.