As the cold December day came to a close, the air aglow with the orange fire of Colorado’s setting sun, the garage filled with the aroma of pipe smoke, he sat, reading some obscure piece of postmodern Russian literature, ostensibly because of the Russian’s superior experience of the world, but truthfully to satisfy his pretentious intellectualism. It looked better on his social network page to be reading books no one’s heard of rather than the drivel most people read. No one could actually challenge his choice in literature because no one had heard of them. It was a wonderful little arrangement he had with himself.

He smoked a pipe for the same reason he read unknown books. Somewhere along the line he decided that this conception of himself was far superior to whatever else it was that he was actually inclined to do - like play video games and watch popular TV shows. Intellectualism was appealing, if slightly boring, but no one needed to know he wasn’t truly one. That would require original thinking and reflection, something he couldn’t be bothered with for reasons he didn’t really know. If he’d taken the time to ask himself why that was, he was afraid he’d realize that he was very dissatisfied with his life. He was too indulgent, too lazy, too self absorbed, too cocky. But as long as he remained blissfully unaware of what he knew to be true about himself, he could continue his facade. It really was a beautiful arrangement.

The problem is, as it always is, that this arrangement had to end. Self-delusional bliss cannot remain forever. It began to require of him far more than he was willing to give. It asked him to lie about himself to himself and to others. Not just the occasional beneficial lie, but the dishonest, I’m-hiding-from-the-world lie. And so he found himself at a fork in the metaphorical road of his life. And that is where our story begins. On that cold December evening with the air aglow.

The book was well written and quite enjoyable, but it served only to mask whatever depression or disconnection he felt inside. He needed to do something, but something was exactly what he didn’t want to do. When his arrogance met his melancholy the result was neither wholly inspiring nor wholly pitiful but something far worse. The product was a wasted existence. Something that though he would never admit to himself, he knew. It was a problem chiefly because it interfered with the development of any sane plot.

Attempting to reconcile his need for plot with the complete absence of one in his own life caused no end of angst. Hitting reload on his friend’s web pages to see what’s changed quickly tires. Reload. His relationships and friendships were lacking due to his own absent motivation. He was single, and nothing he did seemed to fix that. No matter how many books he read or how much television he watched or how many times he tweaked his bio, not asking anyone out seemed to largely override that. Most days he promised himself that he’d get over that and talk to someone with potential, but the world of relationships wasn’t quite as majestically sterile as the world of old books whose authors probably wouldn’t have appreciated the irony that their originally incendiary works were now being used as an excuse behind which to hide from the world.

The problem is that broken promises have a way of breaching the trust between two people. And pretty soon he couldn’t trust himself anymore. Whenever he promised that he’d get himself out of this mess that was his lonely, plotless life, he found himself breaking the very promises he had made. Soon he was immeasurably disheartened and thus worse off than before he had promised himself. His life became this downward helical.

He set his book down and exhaled a long breath of thick pipe smoke. A sip of whiskey warmed his chest as he picked up a Bible. He’d had it a couple of months, but it was largely unused. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to actually read it. He knew he was supposed to love what was written on those pages, but he instead dreaded reading them. Something about shame or an insurmountable sense of ought kept him. He opened the book to somewhere in the middle and started reading. He made it 4 lines and closed the book. As much as he wanted to want to read it, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He pondered this problem. It seemed to spread throughout the whole of his life. He did very little that he thought he wanted and did a lot that he thought he didn’t want to.

He needed to find a solution to this plague infecting his life. The problem was, as I imagine you can imagine, that his life was opposed to finding that answer.