***10*** Moving It Along
It’s weird. Back in the summer, I’d get at least one email a week about something in my column. It would be either praise or criticism, but it was fair clockwork. Ever since changing my format somewhat, I’ve received absolutely nothing. Tarzan Dan was the last guy to email me. While that’s just about as cool a high point to go off on, it’s weird to have received nothing in almost three months. But I know exactly why nobody emails me. I changed my format from being a critic to being a narrator, and by being a narrator I’m given a sort of freedom that can’t really be criticized. Even if I say something that’s completely false it’s okay because it’s my subjective fiction (even though very little of what’s going on in this book is fiction), and because of that there’s no fun in calling me on something.
And as for the praise emails, I know my quality has gone down a bit. Realistically, I’m not spending four-six hours a week on each chapter like I used to. I’m also only writing about 1,500 words instead of 3,000. This is because instead of being a line cook during the day, I’m writing 3,000 word essays and reading six books a week. It’s not an excuse. It’s just fact. I can’t write as well when I’m bogged by school. Hopefully people are still reading and will write me when I get good again. It might be sooner than you think.
I sold my first thing on ebay – four WWE DVD’s – for about twenty bucks. It’s not much, but I feel good about it. I feel purged. They were pretty good pay per views, too. They’re just taking up room, and I’m wondering if maybe there isn’t a theme in that. Lately I’ve been wanting to get rid of stuff. I think I have too many movies, too many books, too many CD’s, too many people in my life that don’t really need to be there. It’s only November, but I feel like spring cleaning already. I’ve been itching for something like an ipod, or an ipod-like device, so I don’t have to fiddle around with my CD collection all the time. Five hundred or so CD’s is a lot for a guy who lives in a 12X12 room. I’m feeling squished by stuff. And by people.
I’m the kind of guy who likes to really lose themselves in one person for a while, you know? Just get down and deep in there. But everyone I know is in a deep freeze right now. I am too, really. None of us have time to spend any actual time together. We’ve all got four or five major research papers due next week, or the week after. We’re all nuts. But that doesn’t mean I don’t long for something really intimate. I still long for love, for something really suffocating and cutting, even though I know it’ll more than likely end in tears. I know this because I listen to pop music. And because I’ve been through it a few times. I know how it goes. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to go around again.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few revelations about myself. It’s nothing really worth going over in detail, but in a few quick swoops I’ve realized that I’m a lot better at a few things than I thought I was, that I wasn’t as bad to some people as I thought I was, and that I deserve to be happy a whole hell of a lot more than I thought I did. I’ve been a lot less insecure lately. I’ve been standing up for myself in places I would previously back down.
Basically, I’ve been flyin’ pretty high.
I’ve been combing through my Writer’s Market textbook to find publishers for my book (my other book), hoping that finding one will inspire me to work on it. I know it’s been because of school, and if I wasn’t on a previously agreed deadline I would have stopped writing this column for school as well, but it’s still no excuse. If I really wanted it done, I would have found time. Or at the very least a muse.
There are pictures of people up all over my room that I have never met and this brings me delight, and if you can figure out why then you’ve figured me out, buster. It only took me this long, how long do you figure you’ll last before you cry and quit?
If you’ve ever really found yourself, you know what I’m going through. Suddenly life is fuller, colours brighter, people nicer. Music sounds better, but still not enough that you stop wanting the new Ipod.
And you want to get out if only you didn’t have so much goddamn writing to do. The second it isn’t 100Kmh winds out there I’m on my bike. I’m flying, you better believe it.
Writing 50,000 words in November sounds like a lot but it isn’t if everyone else is doing it. By the time you read this the month will almost be over but you can still do it if you’re crazy at www.nanowrimo.org. From here on in you’ll really have no idea what chapters I wrote that week because I wanted to be topical and which ones I wrote back in November in between research papers and hitting myself with textbooks. It’ll keep you up at night, the wondering. Long after Inside Pulse has fired me for becoming completely insane.
Everyone is getting ideas for Christmas. Not all of them are going to be good ideas, but that’s okay. Not everyone’s ‘thank you’s will be genuine.
I hope they don’t say the same things about me they said about Frank from Vancouver. God did that guy get the rough patch of grass. A hundred dollars wouldn’t even come close to fixing the damage on those souls.
When you figure out who you really are, then you know not only your internal consciousness but the external consciousness of everyone who has ever told you the truth. The lies count the same but come with different price tags. It’s not the pert difference I’m feeling. What I’m on is a couple hours of late night truth telling. You know, like those scenes in movies that seem to happen off to the side, where the characters are really straight with one another. Yeah, I’ve been put through that over and over and over and over. It’s cathartic and you come out completely different. I feel like such a fresh skeleton.
I feel like, for the first time in my life, that I’m on a path where interesting things are going to happen and are going to be filmed for a documentary to be released at a later time.
And dammit, I like a girl and I’m going to go after her. I feel like I really can, now, that I’m not being some creep with a crush. Now I feel like a real guy with a crush. I’m sure there’s a difference somewhere.
