Past, Present, Future... Karl.

It sometimes makes little to no sense, but sometimes, when you are sick and hurting and bored (and lonely), you start to take stock of what is going on in your life. And maybe because you're sore and not feeling hot, everything feels like a little kick to the shins or a punch to the gut, or a knee to the groin. It's not that there is no hope; it's just that you feel stuck. I worry like that - worry that I'll end up a fat, bald, lonely Karl, like Karl from Aqua Teens. I've got my sweatpants and my girlie mags and and beer and my hookers paid off in quarters and nickels and dimes. Sometimes I worry that's how I'll end up.

Girls don't scream about how cute I am. My health is failing, my hair is receding, my gut is growing despite my half-hearted attempts to shrink it. I'm a little bitter, but mostly just worried. No companionship sucks.

Sometimes I feel like I am going nowhere with my life, because I am going nowhere with my job. I make dick.99, which makes it hard to save, go back to school, pay off bad credit decisions made when I made more money, etc. I can blame the economy, but some of it is my fault. Problem is, sometimes it feels like a lot of it is my fault. My job makes me feel like a mindless drone, a poor monkey, a goes-nowhere Karl.

Sometimes your friends surprise you, and then again, sometimes you wonder who your friends really are; sometimes they piss you off. Sometimes you piss them off, too. Happens. But sometimes they are just Karls too.

People fail, I get that. Life is as much failure as success, and it's how we handle BOTH that really defines us. But as I look at a non-existent love life (for christ's sakes, my ex-girlfriend - who doesn't consider ours much a relationship - showed more concern about me being in the hospital than my current semi-girlfriend, who doesn't seem all that interested in me at all), as I look at others moving on and up and work, as I look at friends leaving, at I look at my financial situation growing dimmer, as I look at friends hurting and none of these things changing in major positive ways... I just don't want to be a Karl.