Following Hope

Now that I truly have free time, no classwork, no papers, no lesson planning, no grading, if I truly want to be a writer, and make a living doing it--because, let's be honest, isn't that the goal--then I should probably take the advice that my friend, who works in the industry, gave me--especially since her opinion has been reinforced.  What's more significant is not that I have work to do to get it to a place where it is publishable, it is the fact that I do have something to work with, that is potentially publishable.  

I just need to overcome my stubbornness and get over myself and do what I need to do in order to get it to the place where it needs to be.  While it might take more of an overhaul than I have previously been willing to give it, if there are bigger possibilities on the other side of that then it is worth it to try. There is nothing definite, and it might not, in the end, work, but it has more a possibility of leading towards success than any other avenue that I can pursue right now as a writer.

At least I am nearly finished with grad school, where I will have the actual time to pursue it--even if I have to get a full time job.  I would rather work 40 hours a week some place and be able to come home and do whatever I want with my time than continue being a student where I have no free time.  I have my own studying to do, my own work to do, my own goals to pursue.  I find that it is easier working full time being a part time writer than going to school full time and being a part time writer.

That means I have to find a job.  That is the tricky part, actually.  On one hand, I will have a master's degree, on the other, I am in Ohio.  It could be worse, I suppose.  Ten years ago, I worked, and struggled, and had no degree, and no hope for the future, and now, my life is completely different.  That's something at least.  While I might not be as successful as I would like to be right now, the fact that I have progressed gives me hope.

One difference between successful people and unsuccessful people, besides luck, and connections, is persistence.  If I have an avenue towards success, even though it will take hard work, it is the way I must go.  I can either be stubborn and accept obscurity or I can follow that little glimmer of hope and see where it takes me.  Time to stop being stubborn and self-righteous.

This is What the Music Does to Me

Increasingly, as time goes by, I get referred, by people in the general public, including by both people who know me well and by people who barely know me, as a hipster.  After having meditated on it a long time, I still can't understand why everyone feels the need to label everything and everyone.  We are all human beings, and we don't need to be branded, homogenized within a category as a part of a system that is set up to sell us the material shit that we don't truly need, those shiny things that so easily distract us and make us forget about how truly shitty everyone treats everyone else and everything.  It's all just so absurd.

That is why I choose to live the way that I do, because after a certain point, you just have to accept the things that you cannot control and you just let go, and be at peace.  I am at peace with the things that I cannot change, because I have no more control over the external world than anyone else does.  Letting go of what doesn't matter is an essential aspect of growing up and moving on and just getting in sync with the rhythms of life.  It is the only way one can be truly honest with oneself.  By surrendering.

Not to the abyss, but to the light.  To swimming with the current and seeing where it takes you while you just enjoy the ride with those who are around you, good times with good people.  Reminiscing about the bygone era when you were faithful to the supreme restlessness of youth, the anarchy of mind and spirit when you thought you were in control but really you were just being selfish.

Maybe we should all be politicians and show our impostors how they need to grow up and be responsible for the mistakes that they have made.  That is a thought, but really I am just as much a part of the problem as anyone ever was, and there is really no solution because, well, that's just how life is.  We are a bunch of inflated donkey dicks in a circle jerk parade.  We all go around with mirrors on our foreheads so we can watch ourselves jack-off from each others' perspective.

But what we don't realize is that, as out of control as it seems, we put ourselves in this position because we start to take ourselves and our ideals too seriously.  What we need right now is to give into our shame and start to move forward and just wear it.

I myself would rather be happy.  In that way, shame can be my blanket, and at least I can rest comfortably at night.  It is the best thing on earth when you can fool yourself into a peaceful state of mind, for at least a little while, before you have kids and that's when you have to be selfless.  If that's what shame can bring me, I will build a fort with it.  God bless America!

Introspection

I think I have it.  I think I know what I am going to write.  I get that first kiss feeling and put my fingers to the keyboard, although sometimes I prefer pen to paper.  It matters in the moment.  It's that impulse.  That naked outside by the poolside on a sunny day feeling.  Smoking a cigarette without regret of the consequences.  There are always consequences, aren't there?  I am not sure anymore.

I put my pen-tip to my tongue in my mind in my position of thinking while I type at the keyboard at my fingertips.  Jimi Hendrix and Hunter S. Thompson.  I am trapped in a different time, in another place, in my mind.  Was I really born now?  In the future that Science Fiction authors used to envision?  Haven't we at some level made it to that point?  There are resonances of dystopia all around us.  "Do you want a dystopia, sir?  Erase dystopia from the dictionary."

As the semester draws to a close, I sit here, oddly relaxed, entering in and out of oblivion.  I am watching a documentary on Hunter S. Thompson, and it is both inspiring and disturbing.  That's how Dr. Gonzo would have wanted it.  That was how Raoul Duke wanted it.

I don't want my life to be like that.  Aside from recognition, what did it get him?  I look up to him as a writer, but I can't accept that being creative and expressive necessarily leads one down that road.  Same thing with Kurt Cobain, someone should have told him (and probably did), "Buck up man, you're a rock star now."  I am sure that it's fucked up beyond what I can possibly imagine, but seriously, if you can just chill out and ride the wave down slowly, you will enter into a new sort of cognizance, which is only possible through time.  Through relaxing.  Through not letting the things get to you. You move on.

You grow up, you learn to deal with life in a different, invigorating way.  I can't imagine the type of things they went through.  Even though I feel close to them as a fan, I only know them through the things they wrote. The stuff written about them.  While some might argue that is the best way one can truly know anybody, as through language is how we define our world, I am not so sure that is even that accurate.

There has to be another middle ground other than suburbia.  Something not so soul-sucking.  I don't want to just accept my materialistic programming and try to make money as my take on religion.

That's why I write.  Not because I hope to be a bestseller, because it is what renews me, over and over again.  I sit down at the keyboard, close my eyes, take a deep breath, and I am reborn unto the pages.  That for me is enough.  Enough to keep going.  To keep hashing it out, to keep making the effort to keep going, to keep living and breathing and learning and making new connections with people.  It is easy to be pulled into the dark void that seems to be opening up below us, but, like Wile E. Coyote, as long as you don't look down, and keep looking ahead at your goal, you are not going to fall.  Whatever you do, don't hesitate, don't stop, keeping going, keep looking ahead, and breathe.

Erotica

Eh, life.  Isn't it grand?  No, that's a serious question.  I think sometimes a person forgets that can happen.  He forgets that life doesn't have to be about what shit he is going through, because, in general, life itself is all hard and disappointing and whatever.  But then there is also those few fleeting moments of happiness, and hopefully he has enough of them close enough together that just when he starts to come down from the last one, he has a new one to renew his faith that there is any meaning to existence at all.  And once he knows what that feels like, then he tries to carry it with him and remind himself of it when the reality doesn't match up to the state-of-mind.