Why we need muses

Many of my successful friends swear by having an established routine.

The alarm goes off at 5:30am, they push a button on the espresso maker, hit the bathroom, then return to the kitchen in time to pour a freshly brewed coffee. They grab the morning paper, or sit in front of the computer and check the latest updates from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, emails, Facebook, and Twitter. All this must be accomplished by 6:30am. If there is extra time, they enjoy extra net surfing, or even indulge (quietly) on the latest of MTV, Mad Men, or Jersey Shore. By 7am, they are out of the shower; by 7:30am, out the door with breakfast muffin in hand, and enter the work spectrum of routine (calls during the commute, morning meetings, secretary flirts, motivating colleagues, etc etc etc).

Having a regular routine brings efficiency. It saves time. It brings order.

Yet, after 6 months, it makes me want to stick a fork in my eye, punch the mirror in the executive bathroom, and shit on the Xerox glass and print 93 copies.

For all its merits, routines eventually turn me into stucco. I feel myself turning into a number, a statistic, and one of the programmed drones on the set of The Matrix (except the hot blonde in the red dress). Eventually, this numbness comes home, I become dissatisfied with life, lose inspiration, get fat, begin to wear the male version of ‘mom jeans’, and fade to black. I age. I die. slowly. 

Once in a while, I’ll bark orders to the kids or wife to maintain my throne duties, but ultimately feel myself turning to a miserable vomitous mass. I call this the “FML” of routine (that’s ‘fuck my life’ for you uninitiated).

Women are the only thing that snap me out of it.

They are my muses. They awaken the hunter. They boil my blood.

Even if only for a short while, they remind me of purpose. They bring clarity. For a short while during the chase, I’m alive.

Yes, I’ll admit that part of the excitement is intertwined with guilt, but that primal, instinctive, raw energy that comes with this hunt is undeniably insatiable. In the movie “Jailhouse Rock”, Elvis Presley refers to it as “just the beast in me.”

I’m sorry. As happy as I am with the kids, and technically (if not entirely consciously) stable with a wife that loves me, I lose that passion for living. I miss being slightly on the edge. I miss being the hunter. Why the fuck would I ever want to settle for this for the rest of my life?

My father once said that if you were going to regret things in life, regret the things you did, and not the things you didn’t do.

I saw a Facebook post the other day that defines hell as the moment where the man you are meets the man you could have been. To hell with that. I want that moment to be like it is every morning when I stare into the mirror. The man I meet on that so-called hell day will be, in fact, the same me.

Why WOULDN’T you seek a muse? Why wouldn’t you hunt? Do you really want to live the rest of your life being lukewarm?

I was raised on puritanical teachings that come from bible-thumping parents, but damn it…….. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this.

How can this be wrong when it makes me return home, look at all the things that remind me of my mediocrity, and makes me take out the trash…. ALL of it (including the fugly ties and shoes I kept for no legitimate reason), repaint the house, get a new car, and hit the gym like a crazed savage.

How can this be bad when I come home with clarity, purpose, and a new-found desire to live, and even energize my family.

When is “bad” a bad thing, when it changes my home life for the better?

I’m not here to find answers or convert anyone. I’m here to vent, and talk about what almost all my other male friends are thinking and doing. I don’t know a SINGLE man (other than my mentor), that doesn’t think about any of this.

I just don’t want to live like I’m already dead.