He sat starring into the bland space that was his home. His mind danced around numerous thoughts of which none would receive focus for any considerable time. Even though his life had purpose, his past full of adventures, he was lost and unfulfilled.

It was the state of limbo he had created for himself over the past three years that was starting to weigh a bit heavy. His life had become like out of tune guitars trying to harmonize a progression of chords in a room where no one cared to enter and listen.

 In his mind a flash of images and sounds highlighted the past years mediocrity. Then in an instant deeper memories surfaced of his former self who was so grandiose in vision and action.  Using his inner voice, which was always soothing,  he asked the obvious for the thousandth time. “What do I do now?”

“I don’t want to die safe or comfortable. I don’t want to concern myself with currency and things. Yet I want all those things. I want to do something great.” He stated realizing he was not answering his question at all.

The sound of his daughter playing in the other room briefly engaged his ear and his mind out of reverie but only for a moment.

“What do I want?” he continued in his self absorption. A practice that was becoming more common as each day passed. But he immediately switched focus and thought he would return to his desk and look at funny pictures or read about things that would pass the time and distract him from making a decision and taking real action. Normally at that thought he would obey. He would listen to his comforting self and go about floundering in a wasteland of content only taking small breaks to do actual work so that he may keep up expectations, how low they had become.

Not this time though. He held his trance while images circled back in his mind and he again reviewed his past. He was searching for something. It was not necessarily a memory. It was not a moment in time that he was after, rather a collection of feelings that had once moved him.
“How could he get that back?” he thought.
“Where did it come from?”
“Why was it gone?”

It was after these questions that the anger crept into his conscious and thoughts turned dark.
“It’s this damn world that’s done it!” So enraged in his mind was this other voice that he mouthed the words and felt every muscle in his face proclaim them without sound.
“How can a thinking man function within such a system?”
“What man wouldn’t be brought down and turned to loathing in such an environment as this?”

He liked the anger and he often fed it exactly what it needed. Not to say it was separate of him, or that it was something other than him at all. He knew exactly where it came from and in a bit of vain self righteousness viewed it as something that was controlled and kept heroically in a separate place. More often than not, he found himself inclined to go to that place. He found solace there. Quite remarkably he found peace there. Maybe it was in that place that he was able to focus better and imagine action and outcome clearly. Maybe because of that he gained a hint of that feeling he was looking for and was therefore compelled time after time to visit and scheme.