kith and kin

yesterday for the first time in almost a decade i had a phone conversation with my older brother. he's my half brother really, from my dad's first marriage. he's in north carolina and apparently is in almost the exact same state of indecidion that i am, in terms of what to do with life. we talked for a couple of hours and it seems he and i have much more in common than do my younger brother and i, which just makes me lament even more the fact that we haven't kept in touch. it's nice to know that i'm not the only one in the family who's wracked with incertitude.

and you know, the only reason i consider myself to be unsuccessful in life up to this point is because i'm constantly comparing my crrrent situation against some judeo-christian ideal of what life should be, i.e. the job, apartment, car, financial stability, strict moral adherence, etc. i need to start consciously changing my thought processes to exclude comparisons of such a nature. it i took my parents' goals for me (and i have a hunch what are most people's parents' goals for them) and excluded them from self-evaluation, i really have very little i disapprove of about myself. of course i'd also have to discredit some societal definitions of what's acceptable, as do we all, and i think i would be a much happier individual. none of this is easy, considering my self-image is intrinsically just an amalgomation of comparisons to "norms", which are all innate in my mind, but it's a healthy step.

album du jour: the smiths strangeways here we come