The Stars And The Sacrifices
"And maybe I think, maybe I don't, maybe I will, maybe I won't find my way tonight."
Depressing e-mails and depressing conversations are the order of the day at the moment. Tough times, I guess. I've had worse, but this last month or so has been a definite low. I'm done whoring myself for Blockbuster, and it's getting worse than useless to pretend I have any kind of long-term investment in it. For a while there, I managed to fool myself into thinking that I could do it, that I could aim for a step up into Human Resources and then start thinking about a career. Finding Jenn knocked me so far out of my orbit that I even considered a life without writing. I mean, I got the girl, so why spend the rest of my life fucking around with the dragon? In some ways, it just didn't seem worth it anymore.
Writing isn't something that comes naturally and easily to me. In fact, a lot of the time it's a painful process. I need that release sometimes, but I don't need to go and get it published. That part is just vanity and validation, and over the past year or so, I've found myself wanting that less and less. In the end, I think most writers do what they do for that one particular reader, and maybe the fact that I've found that reader means I'm less driven towards ambition than I once was.
I wonder, lying in bed as it gets light, listening to my parents getting ready for work, if this is how it happens, if this is the thing I raged against as I left my teens. I had so much anger then, so much desire to be the brightest star in the sky, to prove some point I couldn't even begin to define. Now I'd be happy just to be in the right place with the right person. Fuck the stars and the sacrifices. I'm tired of it.
How I got here was thinking about the Visa thing, thinking about the future. This adult planning I've always hated so much. How I got here was thinking about just turning on the writer thing and making some fucking money. I'm out of patience with the shit jobs and the struggling, with forever waiting in line when I know damn well I don't have to. I could have stuck with jobs I had when I was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. I could have written a fuck-book for the desperate housewives and made a little money. The opportunities were there, and I passed them up because of some mealy-mouthed gibberish about art and dreams.
The days I wish I hadn't are never as bad as the days I wake up knowing it's not too late.
This isn't a pity-post, by the way. I expect no sympathy. A little empathy from certain quarters, maybe, but nothing more. These are just the things I'm dwelling on right now. There's a big fat fucking future up ahead, and I feel like I need to start shaping it before the decision is taken out of my hands.
Depressing e-mails and depressing conversations are the order of the day at the moment. Tough times, I guess. I've had worse, but this last month or so has been a definite low. I'm done whoring myself for Blockbuster, and it's getting worse than useless to pretend I have any kind of long-term investment in it. For a while there, I managed to fool myself into thinking that I could do it, that I could aim for a step up into Human Resources and then start thinking about a career. Finding Jenn knocked me so far out of my orbit that I even considered a life without writing. I mean, I got the girl, so why spend the rest of my life fucking around with the dragon? In some ways, it just didn't seem worth it anymore.
Writing isn't something that comes naturally and easily to me. In fact, a lot of the time it's a painful process. I need that release sometimes, but I don't need to go and get it published. That part is just vanity and validation, and over the past year or so, I've found myself wanting that less and less. In the end, I think most writers do what they do for that one particular reader, and maybe the fact that I've found that reader means I'm less driven towards ambition than I once was.
I wonder, lying in bed as it gets light, listening to my parents getting ready for work, if this is how it happens, if this is the thing I raged against as I left my teens. I had so much anger then, so much desire to be the brightest star in the sky, to prove some point I couldn't even begin to define. Now I'd be happy just to be in the right place with the right person. Fuck the stars and the sacrifices. I'm tired of it.
How I got here was thinking about the Visa thing, thinking about the future. This adult planning I've always hated so much. How I got here was thinking about just turning on the writer thing and making some fucking money. I'm out of patience with the shit jobs and the struggling, with forever waiting in line when I know damn well I don't have to. I could have stuck with jobs I had when I was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. I could have written a fuck-book for the desperate housewives and made a little money. The opportunities were there, and I passed them up because of some mealy-mouthed gibberish about art and dreams.
The days I wish I hadn't are never as bad as the days I wake up knowing it's not too late.
This isn't a pity-post, by the way. I expect no sympathy. A little empathy from certain quarters, maybe, but nothing more. These are just the things I'm dwelling on right now. There's a big fat fucking future up ahead, and I feel like I need to start shaping it before the decision is taken out of my hands.
posted by Michael at 5:55 PM
2 Comments:
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: If you find yourself not wanting to write; don't write. If you find yourself not wanting to be published; don't submit. There are plenty of people out there waiting to take that place, and most of them are a fuck sight less talented.
What I'll do, though, is assume you're down because your wife is in another country. Believe me, I know how that feels. And while I'm in the mood, I'll further assume that all this January gloom, coupled with a soul-sapping job (and possibly a little too much to drink - God knows I was slooooow this December)is making you lazy and unproductive.
Writing is not easy after a break. A wise man said it's like working out in that respect - your muscles aren't ready to be used. Keep working out those muscles, you'll find it gets easier.
Welcome to the final phase of your quarter-life crisis, Mr Motorcycle. There are only better things on the horizon, namely a print anthology credit. And Christ, I don't know about you, but I'm proud to be sharing those pages with those peeps. Don't think so much - your brain'll catch fire.
I AM proud to be sharing pages with those peeps. In fact, I very deliberately went off and read whatever of theirs I could find online just so I COULD be proud. Don't get me wrong, it ain't the sense of achievement that bothers me, it's the process of getting there. It's wondering whether this is worth doing anymore. Yeah, there's a touch of the blues in this post, I'd be an idiot to deny it, but at the same time, there really are decisions to be made. I could go on the way I'm going now, carry it all across the Atlantic and just keep going, but I'm not sure I want to. For the record, I haven't had a drink since New Year, and I've been writing fairly steadily in one form or another since about the same time.
The point I'm trying to make isn't about writing as an isolated activity, and it isn't about success at all. It's about what drives me to write in the first place, and whether or not that particular mojo is a) working the way it used to, and b) worth the additional grief that it brings when placed on top of the shit job and the complicated relationship and the feeling that hell, maybe this just isn't the way forward for me.
If it was about whether I could get published, whether I could make it work, and whether or not I think I'm good at what I've been doing these last few years, there wouldn't be a problem. It's not a matter of 'making it', it's a matter of what makes me happy.
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