Diary of a Demon Dog #27 (Patreon)

I often feel like I’m not enough. I feel like I wasted so many opportunities in my life. I want to go back in time and kick myself for not taking life more seriously. Part of me truly thought I wouldn’t get this far. I didn’t plan for any of this really. I had vague aspirations of fame and fortune but even if I had gotten there, would I have been happy? Was it something I actually wanted or what others were pressuring me to become? From the day I hatched, others looked at me as if I was some kind of gifted genius. I simply said and did what made sense to me. I thought long and hard before bothering to open my mouth. I didn’t think myself special for paying attention to details until I realized that most others missed things in plain sight. For a while it did go to my head. I believed others when they praised my mind. That was until I went to the academy. Everyone there was the top of the top. The real geniuses that would rule this universe one day. I barely limped my way inside under the condition that I took extra classes to catch up. There I felt dumb as hell. The other students talked about things I barely understood. They did things I had never seen before. Every single second there I learned something new. It was intimidating in a way that no beast or demon could ever be. I worked hard but partied harder. I learned so much but wasted so many resources. When the work got hard, some days I quit and played online games through the HiveNet for days on end. Other times I pushed through and succeeded where most of my friends failed. Despite the successes, I still feel like a disappointment to my family. I am a folf. That is a mix between a fox and a wolf. The fox side of my family is the war clan, a ferocious group of fiesty and passionate foxes that think more with their hearts than their heads. The wolf side is the night clan, a stoic and cold group that favor pragmatic problem-solving. Torn between these two, I tried to find my path. In my younger years, I favored the foxes and their emotional escapades. That lead to more pain and foolishness than I have energy to write down at the moment. Was a hell of a time though. In more recent years, I have started to lean towards the wolves. It’s been boring and painful in its own ways but at least there is a point to it all. A light and the end of the tunnel. A plan put down that if I follow, chances are I will get to a calm and stable place. The urge to party and procrastinate creeps up. Some days I give in. Some days I stay in bed. I feel the pressure from both sides to be something worthy of pride. I wanted for so long to make my family happy. I only now realize that I can’t make anyone happy. Happiness is a personal choice. Despite any hardship or success, one can choose to be happy. There are multi-trillionaire megacorp CEOs that haven’t smiled since the last ice age. There are poverty-stricken farmers on some desolate moon that smile every day. My job demands that I present as happy even when I am too depressed to blink. I can contort my muscles into a convincing enough grin to get through the day but I don’t count that as a real smile. I need to find what genuinely makes me happy and chase that. As of right now, the arts seem to be the biggest contender for producing joy but there are some days that I don’t even want to do that. I feel like I am torn between indulging in immediate intense pleasures and being patient for long term slow burn happiness. There has to be some kind of balance right? I can find something to genuinely smile about every day while also working to build a lasting future. At the same time, I can’t keep burning myself out trying to make it happen. I think more than happiness, I want peace. I want stability. I want routine. I want structure. This decade of pure chaos has worn me down completely. Learned a lot though and this time when the right opportunity comes around, I’ll have the wisdom to pounce on it and hold it tight for as long as I can.