ARROGANCE | m.yg

o n e - r i n

   Dreary.

   It's the perfect word to describe my morning, my day, and my life. With perks, from time to time, but dreary overall.

   Today's just like every other day. I roll out of bed at around 8:00am and try to see the positives to my situation. I mean, hey, I'm doing what I love. How much does it really matter that I'm broke? Things seem bleak, but I'm sure they'll get better, I reassure myself. Positives, think of the positives.

   8:30am involves actually putting forth some effort in getting ready. Shower, get dressed, brush your teeth, eat breakfast. By then, it's somewhere around 9:15, and the day can really begin.

   If it's a Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday, I'll book it over to the library for work. If it's any other day of the week, I will stay at home writing lyrics in an attempt to ease my nerves. If one thing about my life is constant, it's that there's always nerves. Today is Friday.

   I plop down at the kitchen table over my second bowl of Frosted Flakes, a notebook lying open on the dirty surface I'm eating off of and a pencil absently twirling between the fingers of my left hand. My dexterity with that hand is lacking, and not soon after the pencil begins to twirl, I accidentally fling it directly into the bowl of cereal, milk splashing onto the already dirty table and one or two actual flakes joining it. I sigh, fish my pencil from the bowl, and then quickly devour the remainder of the cereal. I put the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher and pull a paper towel from the dispenser near the kitchen sink, wiping up the spill. Even with my effort to clean the spill, the table is still dirty. The kitchen is dirty. Hell, the whole house is dirty. I just don't have the motivation to clean it. No one who would ever judge me for the state of my residence comes around anyway, so why even bother cleaning it? I'm not ashamed to live in a dump. At least, not right now.

   The dirty house is in pretty good condition for the small amount of money it cost me. There's a water stain on the ceiling below the upstairs bathroom and a few dents in the walls here and there, but the little one-bedroom flat is holding its own, all things considered. The real damage comes from me being too lazy to actually try and maintain it. The living room is where I spend about half of my time at home, the other half being spent in my bedroom, either sleeping or on the Internet. The room itself has walls painted the spectacular color of mauve, and the wooden floor is in places covered with small and dingy white throw rugs. A TV sits atop a wobbly side table, and a dark gray upholstered couch with a hole or two is across the room from it. The room's lighting comes from a couple cheap lamps, the ceiling fan, and two windows covered by dusty curtains. Hey, it's home.

   I get settled on my usual segment of the couch and pore over the notebook, studying the lyrics I'd written the previous night at somewhere between two and three in the morning. In the back of my head, the nagging thought of the show tomorrow seems to torment me, reminding me that I'm not prepared for it. I try to push the thought away and instead focus entirely on the lyrics. I'd been attempting to create a rap focusing more on my struggle to seem valid, but it just seemed too personal to want to share with the audience that would be watching me tomorrow. I wanted the message out there, but I also found myself too scared to actually put it out there. I had the majority of a first verse finished as of last night, and I find myself continuing it despite the clash of opinions in my head.

   I try to come up with a non-pretentious way of saying that I'm not recognized as much as I should be. I'd already written a bit about my personal situation, with a run-down house, few friends, not much money to spare, and having to work another job to keep myself going all being part of the first verse. I tend to work on the chorus last, so my focus now lies on the second verse. I jot down simple concepts that could unfold into lyrics if I set my mind to them. After a few mind-numbing minutes, a small, messy list in the margin of the notebook reads: