MY RESIGNATION

You’ll have to excuse how dry this post is. It’s more stream of consciousness than anything I’ve ever posted before. My thoughts tend to be dry. Just ask my friends. Or check my Twitter. Or is it my twat? That was more blue than dry. You know what I mean. Fuck it. It’s New Years. I’m making an old fashioned.

It’s been a little over a year since I started this blog. About three months ago, I realized that my best ideas had come and gone, like so many depressive, drug-fueled weeks of unemployment, and that the one year mark  – which couldn’t come fast enough – was as good as time as any to hang up my proverbial hat and look over what I’ve done to see if I can pull out anything of lasting quality. I realized this when I got a press release in my gmail box from a friend who was about to publish his first novel. I thought, I can do that. It’s true what they say, “Jealousy fuels many an engine.” Okay. I just made that saying up. Just go with it. Stop being a dick.

When all is said and done, I think it’d be great if I could end up with something that, first of all, I’m proud of, and second of all, would insert some much-needed funds into my bank account, seeing as how I no longer have the money to change the oil in my truck or get a haircut.  When I decided to change course three months ago, I wasn’t assuming that my writing will one day pay the bills. I hope that it does, and I can continue to write with that hope, however misguided, but I can never assume. This is and probably forever will be a hobby. Prose writing, I mean. Screenwriting… well, that’s another story altogether.

Is it a hobby, is it not a hobby? Shit. It doesn’t matter. My real goal is to get me some fans. I’m talking strangers, not just friends who “enjoy my efforts”. I appreciate the support of my loved ones, of course, but it’d be interesting to see if my stuff has the ability to provoke randos across the world. I want to get laid more often. That’s what that boils down  to.

No, no. What I’m really saying is – and you don’t have to read between the lines much on this one – I’m still not sure if I have any real or lasting talent. I know I’m persuasive, and that that’s a handy skill to have as an artist – but it takes a superhuman amount of persuasion to convince someone you’ve never met that your ten pages are more rewarding and interesting than the other guy’s. And that’s what I want to do. It’s charm, isn’t it? You have to charm the world. And I’m not sure I can do it, sans dimples at least. Maybe that’s just something charming people say. Do you come here often?

Don’t get me wrong, I think I have some good stuff here. There’s a lot of stuff that could be used as fodder for a novel, or a book of short stories, or, at the very least, something that I can look back on and say, “Man, I really wanted to be a writer back then. Oh well, back to the fireworks plant. Doo de doo de doo.” It’s just difficult for me to see where it’s all going to go. Some people would say that’s the exciting part. I just wish I was back on my medication. For now I have this drink.

If you ever ask me about this, I’m still going to call this blog my “one year experiment”, because it sounds better than my “fifteen month experiment” and much better than “that time I played a lot of video games”. I don’t know why you needed to know that. Goddamn these cherries are good.

Let’s take a looksie, shall we? I’ve written a lot of shit in a year. Over one hundred and fifty pieces, some as short as a paragraph and some as long as ten pages, serious, humorous, seriously humorous, humorously serious, stuff that my cousin calls “Kaufman-esque” and stuff that I call “clever for the sake of being clever”. There are pieces that have been soundly rejected by McSweeney’s and The Onion and the New Yorker for being too oblique or pointless or just plain poorly written, which is fair, because there are only a handful of posts that were given more than a cursory glance after being drafted, and there are pieces that have had meager success over the internet, not because of the quality of their content, but because the pictures I inserted were hot on Google.

I haven’t started any brushfires, that’s for sure. But I haven’t been writing in a void, either.

Let’s be optimistic, for a minute. Did I grow as a writer because of this? Sure. I taught myself my strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths being that I know I’ll never know the full extent of my weaknesses and will never pretend to, and one of my weaknesses being that that this previously mentioned strength will forever keep me second guessing myself. This is a good weakness to have, though. I think. Someone once told me that if you don’t second guess yourself, you’re not an artist. The thing is, I seventeenth guess myself. I guess that makes me an artist and a retard.

I shouldn’t say retard. Fuck it. This is my resignation. I can say whatever I want. Retard retard retard!

So where do I intend to go from here? Well, I’m already feeling like a complete waste of space at twenty-four, so I’m guess I’m going to take a deep breath, try not to think about the shotgun in the closet, and focus on writing pieces that can be enjoyed by readers over a long weekend, instead of a long lunch. I’m going to take some time away from this thing and come back to it with the kind of sobriety than can only come from distancing oneself from one’s work. Maybe I’ll take up heroin. I don’t know.

That’s the truth. I don’t know.  I really don’t. All I do know is that I can’t continue in the direction I’ve been going. Things have to change. This isn’t the end of this blog. So don’t abandon it. Already I’m planning on posting one short story a month for the next year. Longer pieces. Stronger pieces. If you know me, you know I don’t take this kind of promise lightly.

And you should call me some time. Odds are I miss you but I’m too proud to cave in and call.

Thank you for reading. I really hope you stick around. It’s been fun, right?

Boy, I feel old fashioned.