Get To It, Dallas

I want to tell you about a good friend of mine. His name is Dallas.

Dallas is an unmotivated piece of shit. He has high aspirations of success and dreams of one day reaching out and touching the world in many different forms.

As he is now, he'll never get there. He's worthless. For every minute he spends working toward his ambition, he spends 20 more with his head up his ass or casually dropping in on the dreams of others as a mere observer.

I've had to be really tough on Dallas recently. No one else ever will be. You see, Dallas is a really sweet guy at heart. He never hurts anyone, he loves to laugh, and the company he keeps generally finds him to be amiable at worst and wonderful at best.

But I know Dallas better than that. I go back further with him than all of his other friends. There are some things that only I can say and do to Dallas.

I hit him yesterday.

It had to be done, and before you get carried away and call me crazy, I didn't physically hit him, it was more like a slap of reality.

I accused him of being a chronic time waster, of feeling good about a day that passes and not being filled with even one small achievement of which he could be proud, and perhaps the biggest accusation came when I told him that he's been lying to himself, and to me.

It was hard for him to hear, I felt the pain in his eyes as he was forced to face some of the harder truths he had been suppressing for so long.

That didn't stop me though. It couldn't. If I had come that far and I only left him feeling destroyed and defeated, what sort of friend would I be?

I kept on going. I listed for him all of the ways I've seen him waste time, the video games, the watching and re-watching of movies and shows, the gambling, and the hours he's spent in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what in the fuck he wanted to do with his life.

Because truthfully, he's always known.

Dallas wants to succeed, and fuck, he's capable of it.

If I didn't believe in him, I wouldn't have had that conversation. I would have let him drift through his life enjoying himself in his trivial indulgences.

But deep down, he aspires for more.

So I told him that everything must go. That he would need to remove from his life all of the things that he could not find pride in doing.

I should mention that this conversation started three months ago. Only recently did he start taking my advice.

It started with competitive video games. We recognized that his indulgence in those games gave him a false sense of accomplishment that was utterly intoxicating. You see, he'd get better at games, win more often, and his skill development in the games would translate into a false sense of self worth.

He recognized how virulent that was, and about two months ago, he cut it out of his life. He hasn't touched them since. I'm so damn proud of him.

Last night, he gave up recreational video games, as well as poker. He felt that, in the former, he was becoming too indulgent in the worlds created by others and not focusing on the worlds he intends to build. In the latter, he realized that, yet again, the competitive nature of the game and his recent upswing in skill and profit had inflated his sense of purpose and worth. But, as he aptly pointed out, the only people who knew of his triumph were the very people who were likely furious at him for taking their money.

He realized that was no way to spend his time.

I really hope that these new moves he has made stick as well as the one he made two months ago. I wish I could say that I have full confidence in him, but I don't. How could I? I've known him my whole life and despite how much I enjoy spending time with him, I've always been ashamed of him. He's been nothing but a disappointment.

I need Dallas to change. At this point in our lives, we're stuck with each other, and we both know it.  And while I've always been disappointed in Dallas, he's always looked up to me. The impetus of change, therefore, is on him.  

Well, I'm certainly rooting for him. We're just not here for that long, you know? Life is good, but it is short. When Dallas and I are both dead, and none of this matters, the minutes he has spent doing things that he was ashamed of doing won't necessarily be any better or worse than the minutes he has spent doing things that he can feel truly good about.

But right now, in this moment of life, it does matter. And when it stops mattering, we may as well both be dead before our mind turns cold.

Get to it, Dallas.