For the most part I laugh at the pathetic attempts that Northern Virginia makes at having an actual winter, but I have to admit that the wind was surprisingly cold as I walked across the street to Safeway earlier today.
The bitter chill was worsened by the realization, as I walked into the store, that I had intended to get gas, and so should have driven over rather than walking.
Ah well.
So another week is coming to another pointless end.
Tomorrow, like every Friday, I’ll be up long before the sun and preparing to cram a full work week into three days.
And today I find myself once again feeling as though I’ve just gotten through wasting four days.
Granted, one of those wasted days (Tuesday) wasn’t wasted entirely by choice, but if I hadn’t had the meeting to go to I’m reasonably certain that I still would have wasted it anyway.
I’m not certain what it is I think I should be doing with my time instead of wasting it, though.
I once toyed with the notion of getting a part-time job, and even went in for an interview, but it didn’t pan out. Shortly after that I started working a lot of overtime anyway, and realized that, even on what have become extremely rare occasions working OT brings in more money than a part-time job would be likely to anyway.
Brian has taken to performing “mystery shops” to fill his time and supplement his income. Mystery Shopping seems to be increasing in popularity lately, as it’s frequently in the lists of “Top 10” Web searches, and I’ve seen banner ads for different Mystery Shopping services.
The notion doesn’t really appeal to me, though, and it would probably cost me more in gas to drive around to the various stores than I what I would actually make.
Honestly, what I really think I should be doing with my time is writing and drawing to a greater extent, and with greater success.
I think it’s really only habit that’s telling me that, though, as I gave up any hopes of being a professional artist long, long ago, and becoming a successful writer hasn’t even really been a dream of mine for ten years.
I still draw because I enjoy doing it to a certain extent, but writing…well, obviously, given how long the average Threshold entry is, I still enjoy that as well, but much like initiating a conversation with an attractive married/engaged woman, I can’t see much point in it.
The rejection slip I got last week was the first one I’d gotten in nearly ten years. Not because I had been successfully getting published for nearly a decade, but because I hadn’t submitted a story in that long.
Perhaps worse than that was the fact that I hadn’t written anything in that time that I felt was worth submitting. For much of the past ten years I have been doing very little in the way of writing. From 1995 to 2002 I wrote a total of zero complete stories.
The first complete story I wrote in 2002 was mostly an exercise, and I had (and still have) no plans to submit it for publication. Following that, I had what was, for me, a prolific period in which I wrote two complete and fairly lengthy short stories.
I then began writing a story that was threatening to become my first novel, but before I could complete it I got this job, and my life, and creative flow, was disrupted by moving across the country.
So by the time I got back to the story I couldn’t remember what was supposed to happen next.
I still don’t remember, and have been unable to find a next step for it.
As for the other two completed stories, they both need extensive editing, which is my least favorite task, and when I don’t like doing something I just won’t do it unless I absolutely have to do it.
So naturally the editing hasn’t been done.
At one point not too terribly long ago I hit on an idea for an online comic book, one that, ideally, could be presented in a simple enough artistic style that I could pull off the artwork myself. My artistic ability proved not to be up to the task, and so an interesting character and premise have been lying fallow since that time.
And of course there is what could be considered my life’s work, a series of books that I first conceived of back in 1986, and which I have been mulling over and refining in my head since then. I’ve written a few chapters here and there along with some character notes and timelines, but really, the books only exist in my head.
Many of the characters will make appearances here from time to time in the form of pictures. My most recent picture was of a character from this series, in fact.
But as mentioned, despite the half-hearted attempts I’ve made at writing the stories, it seems that they are stories that are destined to go untold.
It seems so unfair, though, particularly since I know these characters so well, and love them almost as if they were my own children (which, essentially, they are), and yet even with all of the time I have on my hands, I simply don’t write these stories.
But I don’t write the stories, even though I recognize that in not telling their stories I’m the one who’s being unfair to these characters and their fictional lives.
So why? Why don’t I write these stories? It’s not because I don’t care about the characters. Is it because I’m lazy? Sure, but that’s not the only reason.
Years ago when I worked for a private college back home in Michigan I largely made my living by writing. I wrote press releases, articles for external and internal publications. I even some policy manuals. Much of what I wrote ended up in print in local, regional, national, and even international publications, and I have to admit that it was immensely satisfying to see my words in print, but there was still something lacking, as what I was writing wasn’t really mine. I was pimping some new program at the college, stroking the egos of major donors, and just generally working for someone else’s advancement.
At the same time I was drifting away from writing my own work, generally finding myself creatively exhausted by the time I got home (and the fact that I was usually drunk shortly after getting home didn’t help matters any either), finding that the last thing I wanted to do after sitting at a computer writing all day was to sit at the computer and write some more for the rest of the evening.
But there was something else at play besides my creative exhaustion.
Occasionally as I roamed around the campus talking to different people in search of my next article for the alumni magazine or the donor newsletter I would bump into one of the professors when I’d stop outside a building to get in a quick smoke.
This particular professor taught English, and whenever I saw him he would usually ask me if I was doing any writing outside of work. I would say no, and ask the same of him. He would say no as well, and add, “I start to, but then I think, ‘What’s the point?’ I’ll write something and wonder ‘Who really gives a shit what I have to say?’”
And I think that’s really at the heart of it.
Years ago I read something by George Orwell on the topic of writing in which he put forth the notion that all writers are egoists, that they have a firm belief that their opinions are somehow valuable.
If you lose that belief, then you wonder why you should bother. If your opinions and your ideas, are not valuable, why even put them down on paper (or hard disk, as the case may be) at all? If no one else cares, why should I?
In order to avoid developing that fatalistic attitude you have to harden yourself to rejection, recognize that your work isn’t necessarily judged on its own merits, but rather on whether or not your name caries any cachet, or ay other number of variables.
That is not, however, easy to do. After all of these years you would think that I’d be accustomed to rejection, but the fact of the matter is that each one hurts just as much as the first, and I honestly can’t help but take it personally.
It’s a shitty feeling, and to be perfectly honest it’s much easier to just not try at all. Sure, if you never try you’ll never succeed, and you’ve essentially already failed, but it’s a failure that stings a lot less.
And before you try pointing it out, yes, I do realize that this attitude spills over into other areas of my life...
But I need to point out that the barrier presented by this attitude is not entirely insurmountable. After all, even though it took me a while, I did actually put a story out there for its inevitable rejection.
It is an obstacle, though, and it causes a lot of wasted days to pass before I get around to making another pass at it, and the fear of failure tends to be a much greater motivator (or the negative equivalent of a motivator, at any rate) than the hope of success. So it’s a struggle.
Anyway, that’s enough about that for now. I just wanted to kind of address last week’s rejection and sort of give you my take on it.
So yeah, if you were wondering, the rejection hurt and it was something of a setback to the continued pursuit of my on-again off-again dream of a successful career as a writer.
But more than that, it pissed me off, which is yet another motivator, so at some point I might build up enough anger to try to prove that the editor who rejected the story was a total fucktard who wouldn’t know a good story if it followed him home, waited behind the bushes, jumped him when he was bringing the trash out and kicked the crap out of him, forcing him to be hospitalized and costing him several teeth, the use of his left hand, and years of painful, and ultimately unsuccessful, physical therapy.
And, you know, that’s just a colorful metaphor and in no way outlines the salient points of the multi-part revenge scheme I came up with after getting the rejection slip…
Apart from the cold walk to and from Safeway, today has been largely uneventful.
For my usual Thursday early dinner I made some sort of chicken recipe I found on a box of rice. It wasn’t anything too complicated, just chicken breasts coated with garlic and herbs and simmered with diced tomatoes and served over rice.
It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t especially exciting.
Today I did one of my semi-regular checks on an old e-mal account that I don't use much anymore and found that I had a message from Jenny, a girl I used to work with back in Tucson. It was something of a mass mail that she'd sent out letting people know that she's put up her own Web site.
Jenny was a lot of fun to work with (and even more fun to take to the strip club and buy lap dances for), so it was nice to hear from her after all this time, even if it wasn't exactly a personal message.
Since she sent me the link, I figured I'd give her site a plug. Check it out here.
In any case, that’s probably going to wrap things up for today, and, consequently, for the week. See you all on Monday.
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