Straight Edge Life

There’s a light in the corner of my office. The office which is my studio. The studio which is my apartment. It’s small and bright and the glow is orange. These old incandescant lights are my favorites. Nothing else feels so warm.

Tonight it’s pissing me off. It’s the mortal enemy in a very small war. It provides an ambient feeling that fits with my mood and is totally getting in the way of putting that mood into words. I’ve got three monitors glowing in front of me and this damn little light is causing a reflection in all the wrong places. I squint, I shuffle from left to right in my comfy office chair, nothing helps.

I’m in between choice and obligation. The transition hasn’t exactly begun yet, but it’s coming. The obligation of paying off debt and the choice of what to do with my life when the debts are gone.

I never think that much about accountability but it has been a rigidly defining element in my life. Especially in the last few years. It’s like this… If you fuck up. If you make the wrong choice you should deal with it. Don’t hide. Don’t deny the error. Fess up to the mistake and do what you can to fix it. Until it is fixed. Do not stop until it is fixed. This is generally how I am compelled to live my life. Sometimes it feels like a sickness. Sometimes it feels like brilliance. I won’t get into that now. Let’s just say it’s just me.

The bitch about accountability is that if the error is tricky enough to fix it can take a hell of a lot of time to fix it. Take this debt for example. It’s pretty easy to get into debt. Greed, necessity, ambition, catastrophe, you name it. I’ve been stiffed by clients, I’ve spent too much money, I’ve budgeted and I’ve failed to budged. For too many reasons I’ve ended up in debt. And getting out of debt is a ferocious bitch.

In the last five years I haven’t had a single day when I didn’t think about my debt and how to get rid of it. For the last three years I’ve been working my ass off to get out of it.

Tonight I am finishing up a contract for work that will bring me damn close to being completely out of it. It’s going to take another 1000 hours of work and probably 8 months of my time, but it will be done. And it makes me smile. I can’t walk away from this responsibility. I can’t. I have to finish it up or I won’t be the person I need to be. So I work, and delay the other things I could be doing. But tonight is different. Tonight I know I will soon be able to choose something different.

I think that’s what straight edge is all about for me. It’s about accountability and choice. You’re accountable for everything you do and this accountability gives you the ability to arguably defend your choices. No excuses for mistakes. No bullshit. You just learn from what you do or fail to do and move on. You admit mistakes. No pride. No ego. Just fucking do what you can to make this world better. Or yourself better. Or to help your friends. To once and for all do the things that I want to do and to defend my choice to do it. Nothing is fun if I have a burden on my shoulders. Mental, financial, physical, chemical, whatever. I’m accountable for my own life so I might as well make it what I want it to be. Straight edge.