My Job is Very Boring - I am an Office Clerk

Much like Martha and the Muffins, I trifle my days away hoping for some infinity in an isolated paradise.  I don't think I've ever really had my own Echo Beach, though.  Not a real one at any rate.  Curiously, however, I can identify the feeling with great certitude.  It's familiarity, warmth, and respite all at once.  Intensity without tension, excitement without hyperactivity, and fulfillment without desire.  Not having a tangible Echo Beach, though, I feel almost as if I were at home where I had never been before *Note: there may or may not be a comma missing from the preceding clause; it's up to you to decide*.  But is Echo Beach a universal feeling?  There does seem to be a certain super-individual quality to the feeling, but I doubt that every person has the opportunity to experience it.  If every person had an Echo Beach, I doubt that there would be depression, exploitation, or punk rock.  But what do I know?  My eyes keep watching for the sunset at Echo Beach.

The Good Times are Killing Me

Every so often I manage to get myself into a bit of a masochistic state of being. This past week, for example, my parents came to visit me. Many will react with a clever and original pun on how anyone who takes pleasure in the company of their parents must be a masochist. Kudos my friends; rest easy, knowing that you have made the world of wit and high-brow humour the tiniest bit more unattainable for the rest of us. In fact, overall, the visit was not nearly as tense as it could have been, and all travesties and devastation were avoided, although my father was reduced to tears at least once. As much as my mother frustrates me with her utter and complete mental absenteeism, and as sleep deprived and ill as I was for the duration of their visit, I was a little reticent to see them go, quite nostalgic during the trip, and, being unabashedly honest, I could stand to have them back in the not terribly distant future. For all their flaws, for all the accidental trips to Hull and the boiled plastics, I always seem to forgive them, and in what seems like a considerable stretch to a good few, I always say I love you when they go.

Immodest

When who you are starts to interfere with who you want to maintain relationships with you are faced with two possible perspectives on the dilemma:

• You are lying to yourself; who you are is in fact not who you should be. If you are afraid or ashamed to expose yourself to someone you care for very much, then you must be denying that certain habits and practices do not truly meet the standards you set for yourself.
• The people with whom you wish to maintain relationships are stupid, narrow-minded assholes. Why exactly do you want to maintain relationships with these people anyway? They will take you as you are or will take who you are and fly with it.

So which direction do you choose to think in?

"My friends, my habits, my family. They mean so much to me. I just don't think that it's right." --Modest Mouse, One Chance, Good News for People Who Like Bad News