When I read books with footnotes, I'm jealous. I'm truly looking for the person who can literally pick me apart and analyze every piece of me and my life and tell me what it's all about. But everyone is an inevitable mystery. The very moment someone starts to figure themselves out, that's when change begins. Maybe that's the secret to controlling change. It's not that I would want to hinder myself, which I feel is exactly what a cease in change would impose, but controlling the pace of change could prove to be a rewarding power if it could be mastered, I think.

The fact that we're constantly on a quest to discover who our real selves are is a pretty frustrating concept. We have no solid self, and the self we do have is unavoidably affected and contaminated by experience, surroundings, culture, company, and such. Nothing we are could possibly be a "true self." There is no way our person can be contributed to this concept people believe exists called a "soul." Nothing is real. It's all experience, conditioning, etc. Just like the idea of free will.

I like how some people ask me "where my ideas come from."

Here's the deal. I flood my head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about making appointments, and remembering to do the dishes. Eventually, I have this critical mass of information. One connects to another, which connects to the next, which connects to the next - stick to it, and you've got a train reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you've got what's called "an idea."

So, for that brief moment, I'm Holy. I can't be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein's brain were placed into the body of a young Tyrannosaurus Rex, stuffed full of amphetamines and sex radiation. That's what happens to me. I beam sex rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy fire. If I felt like it, I could scred a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the best part about writing. It's what keeps me going. It's the wild rush of "Shit, did I just think of that?!" With all kinds of weird chemicals flowing through my brain and ideas and images and moments all opening up in my mind one right after the other, a mass of new and unrealized possibilities.

It's a quarter to four in the afternoon, and I feel completely wired. Nobody would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare. Faster than the speed of anyone.

THAT is how it works.

I feel an overwhelming contentness with my life right now. It's come over me quite suddenly, but you know when you realize something? REALLY realize it, like it's not just an intellectual exercise anymore, but a feeling, a knowledge? I call it the "click." Something just "clicked" in my head just now.

I don't have to live my life based on other peoples' standards or expectations. I don't have to compare my life to anyone else's. If I'm happy with what I'm doing and where I'm going, then anyone else's opinion is completely and utterly moot. I'm the only one who will ever live my life, and I have the right to have full control over the reins. There could be huge crowds of people thinking I'm insane and thinking that my life is somehow lesser than theirs, but I will always have the last laugh as long as I remember that my opinion of my life is the only one that matters. While everyone else is busy fitting themselves into little cardboard boxes, I will be living in my own little Technicolor prism.