What Makes You a Failure in 2015?

Jesus. Am I failure?

As I shamble into a third decade that is looking a lot like my second, it is a hard question to avoid. I mean, I certainly do not have any traditional markers of success. I have never been on a plane with a ticket that I purchased myself. I owe nearly fifty grand in student debts to both the government and my bank with no real plan to pay it back other than hoping my dreams come true or society collapses, whichever comes first. I've probably only purchased five percent of my possessions, the rest I've just inherited from friends who were able to "buy" new things. One of those possessions, the bed I've had for eight years, my girlfriend describes as "like sleeping on exposed plumbing."

So when I wake up, back aching, it's hard not to ask, Jesus. Am I failure?

It used to be an easier question to answer. I grew up poor and studied history at a progressive university that emphasized capitalism as a nihilistic rat race and debt as a passive way to enforce obedience. This is to say that I'm used to not having a lot, that I know possessions are hollow and that success is a middle class trap and so what if my glasses look like shit and hurt my nose to wear, that's just proof that I'm not a rat in a maze. No, this is a rat who gets high and likes to read articles on theGuardian. This is a rat who knows what's up.

I'm also a stand-up comedian, have been for six years, and while I haven't made much money or gained any notoriety, I have loaded up on the resource of artistic self-satisfaction. The feeling that what I'm doing is unique and special is invaluable when it comes to balancing out the self-evaluation scales. Sure, I may always be the shabbiest looking guy at my friends' weddings and I don't have shoes that keep my feet from getting wet when it rains but damnit I'm an Artist, I'm not playing by the same rules, man. These people with their beautiful well-lit kitchens, good jobs, and always dry feet, they're just jealous.

To be an artist of any sort requires a narcissistic faith in yourself. It's a faith that you're doing the right thing despite the lack of evidence to support this belief and the mounting evidence to discredit it. It's a delusion, albeit a necessary one. That is where the fear comes in, because you just have to believe you're wandering in the right direction and all the satisfaction that comes from good shows and light praise could be just obscuring the fact that you've been stumbling around an endless desert. Plus you have no friends left because they were tired of being invited to your shitty shows.

I work bussing tables at a fancy pizzeria that is frequented by fancy people who can afford fancy things. It's fine, and for the most part the drudgery doesn't upset the delicate balance of my self-worth, but then a few days ago I was dropping a duck confit pizza off when I recognized an acquaintance from high school. He didn't recognize me (probably because I look far different now, it's not many people who experience balding and puberty in parallel) but I couldn't help it and reintroduced myself. It was pleasant, but then came the always-weird moment:

"Oh I was just talking to somebody, they said you were doing like comedy stuff or something."

"Yeah, yeah I am, yep."

"Cool, and how's that going?" he asked as if the scenario we were meeting in didn't tell the whole story.

"Uhhhhh… it's… uh… here's your pizza, enjoy."

That's the problem with delusion: it leaves you exposed when it crashes into a bit of reality. It's all well and good to be fine with your station in life when you never have to put it into any perspective. But here was some perspective and I couldn't help but take it in: his expertly coiffed hair, his light beige sweater that must breathe like a motherfucker, the quietly expensive watch, his stylish, pretty friends, and the ease with which all of them pulled out their shiny credit cards. I avoided the table but couldn't avoid what felt like reality: I'm not a comedian, I'm a nobody busser at a restaurant I can't even afford to eat at. The T-shirt that makes up my uniform felt like it was sewn into my skin and my future. It may as well have been made up of radiant, blinking lights that read "I'm a huge fraud."

This fear weighs on me more because failure isn't an abstract concept for me. I was raised by a failure, my old man. I had a front-row seat to watch as a combination of drugs, emotional issues, and more drugs wrecked my father's life. I've had to visit him at Christmas in grungy former motels turned cheap one-room apartments for fuck-ups, places that felt like "Hotel California" if it was covered by Elliott Smith, where the walls seemed to be painted in hopelessness. If my father taught me anything it is that failure is a real thing. That a person can reach a point in their life where there is no turning around and picking a different road, where they're all closed off to you, that you can keep making mistakes and screwing people over to the point where there are no more second chances. That there are millions who take to their deathbed with their dreams dashed, their loves unrequited, and their lives wasted.

Admittedly, things are not that dire for me. But the fear is that I don't think you know when you become a failure. Life doesn't present to you big choices, but millions of minor ones that collude and aggregate into a fate you've barely realized you were creating. There are no forks in the road, instead life trudges on, days passing by as your necessary delusions wrap tight around your head for better or worse. One day it's fine that you don't make the same amount of money as your friends and the next they've stopped trying to hang out with your broke ass. One day you're a cool 32-year-old party animal and the next your kids have stopped talking to your broken-down 55-year-old ass.

I guess if that's the case, I should stop worrying about it. I've already picked the boat I'm taking down this river. I should stop wasting my time looking at how much nicer and faster my friends' boats are or fretting if the one I'm in will spring a leak, I should just enjoy the water while I'm on it.

Jesus, that's definitely something a huge failure would say.

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