8 by 12 ft.

I often sit in my small room. These 8 by 12 feet of space shelter me from the elements and store all of the crap I’ve accumulated over the years. This space for living is a godsend, but it is also a comfortable trap.

Within this small space I have a place for sleeping, shelves to stack my books, a guitar lying on the ground, a desk, a computer, and an oversized chair that takes up way too much of the room’s space. I’ve shoved the things I love most into this small room, excluding people of course, most seem turned off by the claustrophobic setting. I get cozy and safe and secluded in my little bubble room that I forget that the world is massive. Just down the street there’s a family that speaks only in the Spanish language and meanwhile I’m signing up for language classes at the local junior college. Maybe I should knock on a door instead.

Housed inside of this room, besides me, is the computer I’m typing on right now. It’s all busted up. I wish I could take a picture of the screen because it’s getting a bit ridiculous that I’m still maneuvering my way around this junked piece of turdy. There’s some defect in the logic board of the shlahba dabba ding dong and now I can’t see the screen clearly at all. Still I sit here for hours a day browsing around the internet, social networking, researching and scheming on this sorry excuse for a computer. I’m searching for something exciting, something alive, something to live my life for. And then I’m reminded of the world outside. A bird chirps, an ambulance drives by, a kid yells at his mom and all of these sounds carry into my ears through my window and totally infiltrate my 8 by 12 foot lair. The sounds remind me that nature exists, drama exists, and relationships exist all outside in this massive world of ours.

I take my eyes off of the square computer screen and they move to the rectangular window knocked out of the wall that keeps me protected from the elements. The world outside has shapes, but they’re often not squares and rectangles. The world has round edges like peoples round faces. You can’t put the world in a box because it’s not uniform enough to shrink and be sterilized into something so tidy as that. The world is as wild and untamed as its inhabitants. The world can’t be clicked around or understood through reading blogs or magazines. The world is a life force that slaps you around and takes you for a ride when you aren’t wanting one.

I often search for an adventurous life in my small room, in my comfortable quarters, from my safe bubble and I don’t find much action. Outside I hear a great commotion, but my rebel yell is excluded from the chorus.

I tell you all of this because I want to burst my bubble as well as yours. I want you to step out of the world that you call yours and step into the world that is not yours and then ask yourself, which one is more real?

I’ll see you outside.