Anyone Can Play Guitar - Radiohead
Balancing your checkbook has to be one of the most depressing activities known to man. Please, let me kill babies instead. I would rather spare them the pain of one day watching their finances list like a schooner running aground on a reef. Each entry marks another fathom shallower, another hole in the hull, another man overboard. My paychecks attempt to patch the leaks with felt squares held in place by cans of tuna fish.
Destiny, protect me from the world.
What makes it more depressing is the knowledge that I'm squandering my family's trust in me. This money is partially an inheritance from my grandfather's estate and partially the fund my parents set aside for my post-high school education. What am I spending it on? An education specializing in a field any talentless hack can claim as their own. I don't want to end up washing cars and selling deodorant "until I finish my novel." I don't want to end up spending night after night tinkering with half a dozen unfinished stories in my messy apartment, never finishing, never publishing. I don't want to end up remembering these as the "good ol' days," the time before everybody realized how dead-end my life is.
Have you ever seen successful men who keep in touch with unsuccessful friends?
I want to be a Stephen King/Billy Collins synthesis. Part brilliant novelist, part brilliant poet. I feel I have what it takes to achieve that goal, at least partly. There are times (occuring more frequently now than in years past) when I feel an extraordinary amount of creative energy simmering beneath my consciousness, just waiting for me to put pencil to paper (or fingers to keys) so it can boil over. I know it's enough to get me a cut above the pseudo-gothic poetry e-zines and bad fan fiction sites, but I'm not sure if it can take me where I want to go. I'm not sure if I can take me where I want to go. I don't know if I have enough courage, fortitude, and discipline.
I got a head full of ideas that are drivin' me insane.
So here I am. I feel like I'm at a crossroads (brilliant cliche, O aspiring writer). I can choose to dedicate myself intensely and unequivocally to my work, or I can choose to slack off, spend my "writing" time dicking around online or playing some video game for the umpteenth time. What I choose now, when the pressures of school are high, will determine my dedication when those pressures are gone. I need to develop a habit of sitting down and writing at least once a day, but my schedule is so chaotic I can't set aside a specific time.
If you fudge this, you'll fudge every battle for the rest of your life.
What if I'm wrong, though? What if I really don't have what it takes to actually make a career out of my writing? I could spend my whole life trying to sell one novel or one book of poetry without any success at all. I would stand before the White Throne with no answer when God asks, "What did you do with the investment of talents I gave you?" I'll just stare at my reflection in the polished gold floor and wonder if Purgatory is really as bad as they say.
You wasted life. Why wouldn't you waste death?
Destiny, protect me from the world.
What makes it more depressing is the knowledge that I'm squandering my family's trust in me. This money is partially an inheritance from my grandfather's estate and partially the fund my parents set aside for my post-high school education. What am I spending it on? An education specializing in a field any talentless hack can claim as their own. I don't want to end up washing cars and selling deodorant "until I finish my novel." I don't want to end up spending night after night tinkering with half a dozen unfinished stories in my messy apartment, never finishing, never publishing. I don't want to end up remembering these as the "good ol' days," the time before everybody realized how dead-end my life is.
Have you ever seen successful men who keep in touch with unsuccessful friends?
I want to be a Stephen King/Billy Collins synthesis. Part brilliant novelist, part brilliant poet. I feel I have what it takes to achieve that goal, at least partly. There are times (occuring more frequently now than in years past) when I feel an extraordinary amount of creative energy simmering beneath my consciousness, just waiting for me to put pencil to paper (or fingers to keys) so it can boil over. I know it's enough to get me a cut above the pseudo-gothic poetry e-zines and bad fan fiction sites, but I'm not sure if it can take me where I want to go. I'm not sure if I can take me where I want to go. I don't know if I have enough courage, fortitude, and discipline.
I got a head full of ideas that are drivin' me insane.
So here I am. I feel like I'm at a crossroads (brilliant cliche, O aspiring writer). I can choose to dedicate myself intensely and unequivocally to my work, or I can choose to slack off, spend my "writing" time dicking around online or playing some video game for the umpteenth time. What I choose now, when the pressures of school are high, will determine my dedication when those pressures are gone. I need to develop a habit of sitting down and writing at least once a day, but my schedule is so chaotic I can't set aside a specific time.
If you fudge this, you'll fudge every battle for the rest of your life.
What if I'm wrong, though? What if I really don't have what it takes to actually make a career out of my writing? I could spend my whole life trying to sell one novel or one book of poetry without any success at all. I would stand before the White Throne with no answer when God asks, "What did you do with the investment of talents I gave you?" I'll just stare at my reflection in the polished gold floor and wonder if Purgatory is really as bad as they say.
You wasted life. Why wouldn't you waste death?
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