The joys of unemployment. I thought that they’d be many. I thought to myself, “I’ll write. I’ll watch TV. I’ll teach myself how to build airplanes in my spare time. I’ll have lots of spare time.”
The truth is, life gets hard when you don’t have a reason to leave the house. When you sit in the dark and try to convince yourself that this is actually what you wanted. I used to say, “If money was no object, I’d do nothing.” It turns out that nothing is a lot more taxing on the human soul than I ever thought it would be. The problem is, I still don’t know what I want to do. I’m pushing in on 30 and yet, in most ways, I still feel like I’m 11 or 12. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That probably isn’t that uncommon of a problem. I’m sure that very few people know exactly what they want to be when they’re 30. Most of them have an idea of who they are in the meantime, though. I’m nothing, and I think I’m fading into even less.
I haven’t been getting restful sleep lately. I shout myself awake several times a night, my blankets and pillows thrown all over the room. I’m lucky that I’m not waking anyone upstairs when I do. I know that I talk and mumble in my sleep. It doesn’t make sense when I do, it’s crazy dream talk, but it’s there and consistent. I don’t even have a good idea of what I am dreaming about so I can’t even use it to be productive in my writing. I just get the vague sense that my subconscious is telling me that I’m not doing something that I am supposed to be doing. Something important. Something grandiose. “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World,” big. I really hope my subconscious doesn’t expect me to be JJ Abrams. I don’t want to make movies.
I think part of the problem is that my writing sucks giant stones. I mean big, giant, Canada sized stones. It’s really bad. I can’t write worth a shit anymore, and my subconscious knows it. I’m a stone’s throw away from giving up forever and going back to work as a jackoff in a cubicle. There’s nothing wrong with being a jackoff in a cubicle. I might as well make money as my soul is slowly and steadily crushed beneath the weight of my ineptitude.
I’m losing my resolve. I’m pretty sure I’ve already lost my courage.
All I have left at this point is a bitter, stubborn refusal to admit that I was wrong.
Ask any of my friends. They’ll swear to you that I never admit when I’m wrong.
So.. I’m going back to work on my fiction. It sucks and it has drawn a lot of time I could have been doing something productive away from me, but I need to do it. Maybe I can make it not suck as much. I doubt it, but anything’s better than some of the stuff I’ve read off the Best Sellers list. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
Or maybe I’ll just fade away…