A Little Crust Around The Edges

Holy smokes I’m becoming quite tired of living out of exactly one suitcase and a few garbage bags. I have these EROTIC dreams of doing things like hanging clothing inside of closets, privately bathing myself and eating food that isn’t just 9 different coagulated ingredients inside of a two gallon ziploc bag that I shovel out with a measuring cup, sometimes directly into my head’s deepest trench.. Over the past 3 years, I’ve been embracing the vagabond arts; at times living up to the name, existing in squalor. Other occasions will be quite boujee and scintillating like the shiny lip gloss that LA girls apply to the duck bills they’ve had installed over their birth lips. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling the need to plant myself firmly in a location. I crave the structure, miss my friends and look forward to getting back on stage to do comedy again. I figured before I transmogrify into a porridge eating, prune juice sipping, rocking chair…um…rocking….ADULT…I owed myself a final journey.

So here I am, extremely naked, on the ninth floor of an airbnb that I rented for a full month to treat my motha fuckin’ self for my 30th birthday. It is very possible that someone in one of the many surrounding high rises (all of which I could reach with a hefty stone’s throw) is staring at – what is now considered to be – my geriatric manhood as I furiously type these grateful words in a very open floor plan with several wrap around, ceiling to floor windows. Enjoy the view. This wave of gratitude comes from a recent rekindling of a relationship with a barefooted bohemian side of myself that was being subdued by a number of very bad habits that I actually came to Hawaii to violently abolish. Prep for the new decade so to speak. Let’s rewind to age 29 and ½ before delving in.

Prior to choosing Hawaii for a comically long vacation, the plan was to go to Ibiza and Greece for two weeks of utter bedlam. I met a travel crew over the past three years. A lot of people say that it’s stronger than a German Panzer Tank. Their words not mine….TANK TANK TANK!!! REMEMBER REMEMBER!!!!. MY WORDS MY WORDS!!! It’s a really dear group of friends that each make up one piece of the Mighty Autobot……Decepticon, depending on our mental state of being. I alluded to bad habits earlier. I noticed that, while I was planning this trip, the habits were getting worse and worse. Plainly put, shit hit the fan in my life. Ya know when you were a kid and you’d stick your dumb gaping kid mouth in front of a fan and go EEEOOOOOWWWWOOOOOOWAAAAAAAWAAAAAEEEEEOOOOWAWAWA? You know exactly what I’m talking about. Now picture this: You’re doing that and then a person shaped like Human Existence walks up with a pale of…like…12 different types of shit. The existential entity then dumps that entire pale of shit onto the fan and it spatters all across your face and into your mouth. In response to this, my cute little dopamine sweet tooth devolved into proper medications. There was one particular evening in which I had been simultaneously watching television, doom scrolling through IG reels, smoking a vape, smoking the other stuff and violently shaking my legs. I looked like a cracked out child mainlining mountain dew and pixie sticks at a 9th birthday party in the ball pit at a Chuck E Cheese. I was waking up and instantly attempting to “pass the time” and fast forward through the day. I desperately wanted to suppress all emotions and speed up my life – what an asinine thing to desire. These are not the times The Barefooted Bohemian flourishes. No no. In fact it’s when the very ungrateful, stimulus driven cretin boy starts screaming from the back seat. “I want ice cream!!!” Silence….”I WANT ICE CREAM NOW!!!” You don’t get any more fucking ice cream, tiny loud one! I’ve been giving you ice cream in a few different shapes and it never satisfies you. I wanted less of this swill diving dumpster creature around. I feared that if the problems were not addressed, I would wake up a very old, sad and lonely man one day….can in one hands, elf bar in the other.

So as this geyser of emotions is begging to spring forth, I wonder to myself if this is really the time to be going on a dopamine fueled bender. I thought to myself, “I’m turning 30, do I really want to start a new decade off with a wicked hangover?” I did not! I thought it might be a good idea to eradicate these bad PATTERNS (Isolated I don’t think these things are bad in moderation) and lay some good oleeeeee healthy railroad tracks down for the thirties, bippiddy bopppity I’m an ole timey railroad builder and I’m a baked clam in a Denny’s Restaurant with a belly full of butter right now. True story.

I decided to pivot to Hawaii. The game plan was to go to the Big H and focus on: surfing, eating super clean, reading the bible, destroying bad habits and transforming my body into Matthew Davis’ MATT TOLLMAN from 2002 hit Romance/Drama BLUE CRUSH. For the first two weeks, I was an untouchable machine that ran off of SUNLIGHT AND MOON PISS!! I was feeling so much mother fucking growth course through my veins. It’s June. My head is the food pyramid. My neck is a stalk of celery. My chest is Lenny Kravitz’s refrigerator. My torso is a gaggle of Canadian geese in the Flying V. My Thighs are golden glazed ham hocks on the Christmas table. My calves are chocolate Godiva bars. And my feet are all over the internet generating passive income. I feel like the pinnacle of health. I’m doing a 30 day pilgrimage through this Bible app that is genuinely firing me up. I’m listening to that dude Isaiah prophecy and it’s stirring the grand vat of porridge that is my human soul. PORRIDGE!!!!!!!I am no longer the vigilante that fights crime in the name of Southern California Homeowners Associations. I have been promoted to be the vigilante that delivers swift crime mitigating tech blows in the commercial business sector in muggy Houston Texas (remote role thank the Lord). Things are going very well and I feel a wave of contentment wash over me and I’m no longer reaching for SOMETHING to make me feel DIFFERENT every few minutes. I felt like I had defeated the bad habits.

And then the great succubus of the night comes lurking into my airbnb bedroom one night. This feeling is all too familiar. The beast crawls into my bones and I feel a great regression uproot my progress and control my mind. And then my mind fails. I beat myself up because I’ve disappointed myself and I’ve disappointed God and I’ll have to lie to my friends and family forever about “being in a better place,” and on and on and on and why am I even trying this? I hate when I fail. For some odd reason the failure makes me cower in shame and hide from all of the good. And then I speak to a really great friend of mine, Kyle Whitenmire. And he reminds me of something very simple yet so profound. He reminds me that we are deeply deeply flawed and that if we chase perfection for anyone, we will always, always burn out. It only took two weeks for me!! What we should be chasing is a relationship with God. Think of your best friend. Would you run away from that friend if you made one mistake or would you talk with him/her? Why am I not going to God like I go to my friends when I fail? Unfortunately it’s because I, along with so many others, have distorted the beautiful tenets of Christianity. For some reason it is ingrained into our impressionable young skulls that we mustn't and we must, opposed to just existing in the presence of God and having a relationship with Him. I have such an inclination to over rotate in life. The pendulum swings and it swings fucking HARD. I feel like I need to fix the mistakes by being better which, ironically, just makes me shut down and retreat into the harmful behaviors even more. The equation is easier the more you simplify it. Walk towards God - the rest will fall into place.

So I have the realization that it is time to stop trying to be perfect for everyone. I also realize that

the past three years have been fucking awesome but I’m officially ready to build a home and get back to the people that I love most in my life. I feel this organic transition of run run run, go go go to a desire go back to Atlanta and Florida and begin to build. I miss comedy, I miss my best friends, I miss my family. I am extremely grateful for the past three years and what it has taught me. I will likely revisit a life of being a vagabond, but now it is time to go home.

But first, I get to wave goodbye to Hawaii and thank it for getting me ready to enjoy my thirties with a newfound clear mind. The pampering process begins. I get a hotel on Kauai for 5 nights. I eat like a King, explore the island in the comfort of a helicopter with no doors, I float in the ocean, stare at a super moon that said hello to me on my fucking birthday which happens to be the Fourth of July because I AM A VERY SPECIAL BOY, OKAY PEOPLE!!!! Get that through your skulls. So there I am, Leaning against a coconut tree blessed up under this fucking super moon that’s dancing on the ocean….thankful for this great experience and excited to begin a new chapter in life.

Hello, thirty. I welcome you, bitch.

Sincerely,

Your Friend Karl