A substantial part of me never wanted to be a writer. Not really, if being a writer meant seeing things through, and publishing, and opening up to criticism. It was just a satisfying way to think about myself, but not an actual path to choose in this life. Just like being a comic actor was a more than pleasant daydream, but not an ambition to be actively pursued in the realm of “the real world”. But a person can only spend so much time running away from themselves before it becomes obvious that, no, you cannot change who you are.
Isn’t life just awful when it forces you to recognize the truth in the cliché?
National Novel Writing Month comes round; I don’t participate.
Taking a creative writing course; I only go if it’s free, and then I drop out after two sessions.
Someone whose opinion I respect tells me to write something and show it to others, which is the kind of external push I tell myself I have been waiting for; nothing.
If I was an animal, I would be … Well I would not have this problem and I would simply be, which sounds just wonderful.
Giraffe. Hedgehog. Cat.
When you get to be 26, you are pretty much at the Socratic age; it becomes clear just how much you do not understand. Just how much maturity you lack. You begin to know what you do not know, and how that vast quantity has decreased only slightly in the previous years. You are also at an age where you have gained a wee bit of knowledge by running up against the same walls over and over: There are many things you cannot change about life or yourself. Sadness. Loss. PMS. Enlarged pores. Proclivity for analysis. Overactive imagination. Lack of ambition. Love of words.
You will probably never be a famous author, if you lack the drive. You will probably not be satisfied in a non-creative job, if that mind keeps churning. You will probably never be asked to model skincare products, but who would want to. You will cry, and you will be sad, and you will be irrational. And you will be a writer. No matter how hard you may try and escape or avoid. So there.
