January 04, 2006
There has always been this great sense of time weighing heavily upon my shoulders. It isn't merely that I feel I have not enough time to do the things that I would like to do but more the fact that no one knows how long they have a right to the amount of time given.I could die tomorrow and not have one thing published.
Time, for a person who writes, is not kind in other ways as well. One cannot simply sit down for a week, prattle out five hundred pages and call it a book -- one has to feel that they've earned this right through their words. One has to feel fulfilled, satisfied and sure. Even then, a writer is rarely complete. Even if they are published, they will go back and look upon their work as something that could have been better. They will evolve in their writing and finally find the perfect ending to the paragraph that they, long ago, hacked together on a bad day.
It's difficult to communicate exactly how one feels through words. That is why it is a form of art. That is why it can be an excrutiating process.
For years I have struggled, just as most everyone does, to find my calling. I had the bow and arrows but not a target to bury them in. Now, I feel I know where I belong and yet time is still pushing harshly against my senses.
In order to enhance my skills, I have returned to school. My hopes are high and my heart is willing, but what is promised in that piece of paper? Number one, I lost my job due to the scheduling of my classes. My pockets are not that deep and Unemployment only lasts so long. Number two, the topics of which I love to write seem to have no place in my world. My subjects are often too offensive for the opinion section of the school newspaper and I detest merely reporting the news. Interviews and sporting events, book reviews and who's who, what's 'in' and what is 'out' -- none of these topics are appealing to me. I like politics but we all get enough of that on CNN.
I am caught between the moments in time where one could smoke on screen without being portrayed as the bad guy and this absurd era of political correctness and Low Fat toothpicks. What was right is now wrong and what was wrong is now WAY wrong. We are an offended nation and we'll sue you to prove it. Speak freely and you'll find yourself fighting against every creative outlet there is. We live satire but we're not allowed to write about it.
I blame this on my lack of fame. There is a license out there for those who have a lot of money or have personally undergone extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, I have nothing extremely devastating about my childhood that might make for a fantastic story (therefore I could blame my parents for not beating me or locking me in a cage when I was 9). No one in my family has won the lottery, had marriage troubles or killed innocent animals as a sacrificial gesture. I am not an extraordinary person as I am not gay, missing one leg or trying out for the Olympics.
I simply forgot to make time for those things.
Be offended if you will but we are all guilty of turning up the volume when the news turns to tragedy, horror or obscurity. The boat that capsizes, the wars that rage, a man eats his victims, the mine that explodes and just how likely it is that the families of these victims can sue over false information.
I'm just making the point that I am not interesting enough to read.
I suppose that's better than having lived a dramatically painful existence.
Perhaps it is time to switch to fiction...