thedonproject
i am awesome.
Personal
Published 09-13-2009 on my old wordpress blog.

I think I’ve figured it all out. I’ve been feeling pretty good for the past week or so, and a week of feeling pretty good hasn’t happened in a long, long time.

I think this trip to Europe thing that I did may have changed me after all. I spent almost a month, minus a week in the middle, completely by myself. Alone in various foreign lands where the number of people that spoke the same language as me was often quite close to not that many. And through all this hardship, I survived. I got a glimpse of what people are really capable of surviving. Like the holocaust, or poverty, or war, or famine, or whatever. I didn’t go through anything nearly as horrible as all that, but my capacities for empathy and imagination are above average, so I can extrapolate those experiences from my own. In other words, in Europe, I think I learned my own ability to survive in some tiny way that is turning out to be a moment in my existence that will shape the rest of my life. I mean, when people ask me about my trip, they are often incredulous that I went alone. But I did. And I came back an even better person, because I know that whatever happens now, I will survive.

And this nature show = life idea is really starting to grow on me. Not just accepting my beta male status, but accepting the idea that failure is inevitable. In fact, failure is natural and necessary. Failure is supposed to happen and it’s the successes that are out of the ordinary. This idea feels awesome. Like a revolution. I can do whatever I want now and if I fail… Cool, that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m not wording this very well. There’s something about accepting the inevitability of the failure of my every action that gives me the courage to go through with things. All of the sudden I am an excellent conversationalist and I have interesting stories and I have great eye contact and I laugh at your jokes and I am smiling a lot and I am awesome. Most importantly, I’m not overly concerned if you know it or not.

Since I’ve started thinking like this, I’m seeing more good things than bad things. I feel a little bit like myself again. And I’ve done some awesome things in the past week. For example:

My team won the music round on Trivia night.
I ruled at open house.
I took my sister to see Def Leppard and Poison for her birthday.

Okay, I should talk about that show here. I bought the tickets a long time ago for my sister’s birthday. 15th row, super expensive, but a great gift. Then, I unknowingly signed up for this contest by RSVP’ing for an event on Facebook. Then, I accidentally won. I got my prize of some free tickets and a meet and greet with Def Leppard. I inquired as to when and where to pick up my gift and was told doors open at 6 and show at 7. Ok, I’ll show up sometime between those hours then. We watch the first half of the Sounders game at everybody’s favorite local gourmet burger family style joint and proceed to arrive at the show at 6:30. Walk up to the will call counter and they know nothing of this contest. They give me the excellent directions of: “find the person that’s walking around doing the contest stuff, I don’t know where they are or what they look like.” So we find the security supervisor and they go off to find someone else. They come back later and say we’re out of luck. Since I’m so awesome these days I say “well, I knew it was too good to be true,” and we make our way to our seats. I use my cellular device to contact some people in the know and start to fight for our prize. My contact tells me to get the people to call a guy named Brad. So I talk to two security guys who tell me to talk to a guy in a yellow shirt named Ben who tells me to talk to a guy in a white shirt named Robert who uses his radio to fail to call Brad and then tells me to go up to the box office and look for him. I get there and talk to a lady who tells me to find Heather but ends up finding “Chops” who tells me there’s nothing they can do because they all have their heads up their asses. Oh no, they don’t deserve that, I guess. But I was a little pissed that my sister expected this big surprise only to have it ruined. I tried to give those free tickets away before we went down there, so I guess it was lucky that no one took them. Luckily I never go to these stupid mega-shows and won’t have to deal with this nonsense again. The show itself was ridiculous. Cheap Trick was supposed to open but never showed up. Poison was pyrotechnics and ridiculous outfits and long guitar and drum solos and fist pumping sing alongs to songs 15-20 years old. Bret Michaels’ voice was pretty ruined, but this was the last show of the tour, so I guess that’s to be expected from a 46 year old rock star. It was still pretty awesome and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much at a show. Def Leppard was ridiculous as well. Their stage set up was three levels of massive TV-stage. They didn’t have any pyrotechnics, though. I didn’t laugh as much, because they took themselves a little more seriously. They still think they’re bad ass. In all, the show was awesome and my sister and I had a fun time.

And today, I went out for breakfast. It was awesome.

I can’t wait for all the awesome stuff that’s going to happen. Like all the shows I’m going to (Dr. Frank, Twilight Sad, Grand Hallway, Get Up Kids), for example. How many times did I say awesome in this post? 10 if you count the title.

If you like this page, you can buy me a coffee.

Keywords: awesome, def leppard, poison, revolutionary life changes maybe

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