Curiouser and curiouser.

I'm constantly amazed at just how long life is. The amount of time it takes me to write this sentence is so minuscule, so fucking irrelevant. Two seconds, the breadth of time in which so little can be accomplished, but so much can be destroyed. An object can fall twenty meters, a heart could break, a bone could snap or a library catch fire. So much can be lost so quickly.
Imagine how much you can lose in five years. If life steadily declines, without improvement, for that long, then what does that mean? There is an old saying, which makes fun of an even older saying, and it goes: "Quitters never win, and winners never quit. But those who never win, AND never quit, are idiots."
I've been called a lot of things, but no one ever thought I was an idiot, not even when I did incredibly stupid things. But I've done enough of them now that I'm starting to wonder whether I have sort of unclassifiable handicap, some inexplicable form of brain damage that makes me seem perfectly intelligent and suited for real life but really leaves me bereft of any ability to function on a normal level. I'm like the opposite of Rain Man. Instead of seeming useless and being brilliant I seem quite capable but really can't fucking do anything.
How many lives were led in mediocrity that began with great ambition?
Is normal life the best I have to look forward to? Is that bad? Is there even such a thing as normal life?
I have a close friend, a true artist and classic ascetic. He renounced material society years ago, gave away all of his possessions, and has been hitchhiking across the country ever since. He eats enough to survive, sleeps enough to keep going, and makes art wherever he goes. The large part of his work will never gain recognition, because the bridges and abandoned warehouses that he uses as canvas will eventually be painted over or knocked down, but he paints anyway because he doesn't care who sees or doesn't see it, or whether it will still be there the next day. He certainly doesn't care if any of his real canvases ever sells because he has no use for the money.
I could never live like that, or so I thought. I want to have a bed, and a house to keep it in. I want to have an iPod, or an iPhone, and a Cadillac, and a yacht, and a mansion, and a football team, and a TV station and a publishing company and a record label and fucking everything else that there is for a person to have in this world. But I don't have any of these things. I'm practically homeless, broke, with no marketable skills and (obviously) a downward spiral of negative thinking. All I know is that I need to get back to writing more often, and so here I am. There is no need to hesitate at posting such ersonal thoughts here, as I don't use my real name and nobody reads this blog anyway.
I mean, shit, it never updates, now does it?