In real life I'm a real raconteur, I love telling my anecdotes and my main crowdpleasers are pretty well rehearsed and always get a laugh. The ones I tell are generally about some bizarre thing that happened to me at one point or another, like the times I've been stabbed or a dumb hitchhiking trip I did once.

But y'know, it occurred to me this weekend that those stories aren't about terribly important things to me. One of my stories takes place the first time I ever cut class and ended up getting involved in a pretty surreal series of events, but see that's also the day I met Anthony.

It's not a terribly interesting story. The guy I cut class with introduced me to Anthony, and he was a total weirdo who liked Final Fantasy so we became fast friends and before you know it I'm the best man at his wedding eight years later.

So while I try to live an authentic life, it seems that the most important stuff to me is stuff that I keep to myself, those dull moments that scarcely merit remembering.

Meeting Corey at Anthony's birthday party, riding our bikes through the suburb streets in the middle of the night to get some shitty junk food from the mini mart, hanging out at the mall and seeing who I'll find in the manga section at the book store. Not terribly interesting, but very important.

The things that are important and interesting to others tend to be stories about some traumatic something or other that happened to me. And I've got plenty of those. But y'know, those are for late nights when smiles and tears are indistinguishable between the words of an old 42 conversation.

I spent some time with a dear friend this weekend, swapping stories of various traumatic flavor while playing games and watching movies and figuring out what now was supposed to be.

I'm in an odd era of my life. In the past, things were always defined by the people I was closest to. And now it's about me, and there's something very strange about being my own person in a story about me.

I'd be lying if I said it was easy. It's easier now than it was before, but I'm far off the path now. A song recently asked me if this is the life that I lead or the life that's lead for me, and I find myself far away from the blueprints laid out by people who placed me as an integral part in their plans.

There's comfort to being a cog. I'm not claiming to be free from the clockwork of our civilization, and it's certainly not my goal to become so. It's only ever been my desire to find my steps in this complicated dance I've never really seemed to get.

And I am not anywhere close to doing so. I think I'm never going to figure it out, and maybe that's alright. Do any of us ever get what we want in the way we want it? Is desire really the pit of disappointment in this flawed world?

Then again, what is it I desire exactly? A warm hand in my own? A soft kiss on my lips? Would it do from anyone?

I miss the ocean, the warm embrace of the Pacific. The smiles of my friends. My Dad's comforting presence. Home.

Home's where the heart is and I've left mine strewn all over the place. How many times can I carve off a tiny piece of my heart to offer a friend a souvenir? How many souvenirs do I keep myself?

This world feels painted with my heart's blood. Is that how I've chosen to take control? By giving myself to the world as a silly storyteller? Am on the path of least resistance? Should I long to be free?

A friend told me recently that there was no shame in complacency, that life should be easy. And yet my best life lies through a path of thorns in a world I've never felt at home in.

I'm not even sure what I'm on about anymore. I moved forward in some ways I wasn't sure I could do anymore recently, and that alteration of my reality always comes with a fair bit of instability as my interior world realigns itself.

I think right now is an era of late night conversations and awkward lunches and being sleepy at inconvenient times. Just when I was getting used to the dance steps of before. I'm afraid I'll stumble.

But y'know, those things that I'm afraid of show me what I'm made of. So here's to being a bad dancer, but dancing nonetheless.