three strikes and you are out

Events today led to another change in blog titles, along with the fact that after tracking the number of hits my Web site receives I realize there were way to many hits from childhood poetry fans to continue blogging under that title with the knowledge I had. Let me precurse what I am about to write with the fact that I do not feel spastic or neurotic or resentful. I just feel embarrassed. Today I was reminded that when faced with the reality of certain situations, with the at times mundane, never as sexy as imagined, nor me being as "great" as I know I am reality my lame-ass self delusions begin to crumble. Rationalization begins to set in. I start seeking reasons to quit. I start thinking about other impossible paths in relation to where I currently am. Today I remembered quitting baseball in the sixth grade because I always feared swinging at the ball, afraid I would get hit and experience pain and because, as a consequence of my fear, I realized that one day I would never be an All-Star. I remembered the short fiction awards in high school, the nearly perfect ACT scores, and the lack of balls to stand up and attend that school in NYC that offered all the scholarships , opting instead to go to that in-state college my parents offered to pay for and where they could keep a better eye on me and I be closer to them if I faultered. Basically I was reminded that I still have issues no matter how much I would like to believe otherwise. I still at times want to blame my past for my fears today. I am 28. I live under my parents roof all in an attempt to get my shit back together. I was so willing to return in large part because I just gave up pursuing any dreams once I left grad school and felt the complete degradiation offered up by entry level retail manager status. It was too much work, too little pay and in no way engaged the soul. It was all about profit, profit, profit. And as I said before, I get embarrassed because I know I can no longer blame anyone else, right or wrong. I'm afraid now because I don't necessarily know if all of me can be fixed in anyway, anymore. Has too much time slipped away? I no longer know, as a friend once suggested, if I can change any more than I already have or not or if I have any viable dreams of my own worth chasing.