I thought I had achieved something by writing half of something. I have thirty thousand words penned. It’s not a short story and it’s not a novel but it is a reflection on how I am always in the middle of decisions. Turns out writing was not the party trick. Turns out figuring out how to get the words into the world is the party trick.

It was very noble for me to sit and assure myself and others that the story I had written, ripped from the life of a unsuspecting lover, was a passion project. A love letter to myself and what I wanted. A great pronouncement that yes! All it takes to be a writer is to, well, write. Damn, my ambitions have turned on me and now I want to be published. This work might not be it but to task one’s self the job of being a paid writer is to task oneself with the job of being acclaimed or famous. And just like that I realized I am standing on the stage of “the voice” or “Australia’s got talent”. Look at my generational entitlement. I am way too embarrassed or proud to come to the table of my ex boyfriend with the existential crisis of ‘life purpose’ seeing as I mocked him heavily for his dreams, goals and business falling apart at the hands of fate while I gloated that I am thriving in my new career yet to be verified. To my defense, I was half a bottle of gin deep on an empty stomach when I told him his life work amounted to nothing. I should really learn to hold my liquor or keep my mouth shut when I’m guzzling it down.

Things just got very real. Not failure, that’s always real and disappointment, that’s constant. Things just got very real because now we shall see how bad the little heroine is willing to work for it. I’m going to need a job that supports my newfound ambition of writing the seminal text of my generation. Yes, my ego is probably that large, I just hid it behind the classic writer props of alcoholism and self-doubt.

I’m lost, I wrote an earnest manifesto right here about how I don’t need outside validation for my work but the work can’t exist without an audience. Or I am Van Gough, very dead before any recognition passes by my grave. Something I am also at ease with as long as the words on my tombstone are “I told you so”.

In positive news, I have lifted the fiction ban and I am consuming. Now I know what my voice sounds like, I am consuming authors who know how to write sentences. It isn’t all so lost but I am sick of being honest with myself. I am constantly blindsided, how can we always be our own worst enemies? Am I supposed to gracefully and dutifully continue on with the lie that the words are enough. Oh won’t someone listen! Danger danger. That looks like self pity and that is only acceptable if it is funny and today, I don’t have it in my to laugh at my naivety.

xx SJ