We all live in this shitty reality called life and as per the link below it goes on to tell you it is full of glorious bollox that just loves to fuck with your writing time, but it made me think just how on the money the author is, we struggle everyday, some of us just to pay selected bills, and get food on the table (We are kind of at that point currently) but what he says is very true.
These moments in life do define our writing, sometimes even our writing skills, god knows I’ve adapted my writing to go off on a weird tangent I’d not normally go off on, but the weird shit in life inspired me to do so, and I wrote quite a few interesting things out of those experiences, are they worth posting? Hell no, they are total shit at the end of the day, but I got them out of my head and they helped me to adapt, and grow (I’m not going to say “my craft” I find that to be a little pretentious… but to each their own right?) my abilities.
I’ve been one of those typical writer types that has gone from job to job, it’s only the last 6 1/2 years I actually stayed in the same job (but working for two different companies halfway through) still I was there for over 6 years my personal record actually, 4 years was my usual best before it became so friggin tedious that I wanted to drown myself in a pool of some homeless guys urine… (I only made it to 4 years once to be honest, most of the time it was maybe a year at best)
I remember my first “real” job even though I have been working since I was 14 thanks to my father (story for another day) but that very first job where you walked into a building, and there were cubicles, side offices and people all over the place racing around like rats looking for their personal piece of the golden cheese, it was probably a bit of a wake up call I guess (by that I mean I’m now in my early 40’s and can’t remember…. too much beer I think… or magic mushrooms… couldn’t have been the pot… pretty sure it wasn’t the acid..) I worked in the back, it was an Electronics company and my task was to make 4 – 20 milliamp modifications on electrical transducers…. not a hard job, and at 18 it was pretty good money for the late 80’s but jesus christ on a cracker was it boring as shit.
I ended up building (out of solder) this big gallows complete with a murderous scumbag that was awaiting the final word from our benevolent King before the trap door dropped and his neck snapped to the cheers of the barbaric yet Hollywood cute villagers that all looked healthy and well fed even though they technically should have been riddled with disease scabs/sores and god only knows what else ripped you a new one back in the “good ol days”
To me it was actually pretty bloody good (I’m not being bias here at all…..cough….) but to my regional manager? yeah… no, unbeknownst to me but my English boss was always blocking my getting fired, while even though I was doing my job, and pulling in my quota of boring modifications no one else seemed to like my talents at molding solder, so when my boss was transferred back to the UK (I was in Australia at that time) I was pushed out quicker than you could fart.
I didn’t really mind it, although I did miss the money, but it was stunting my brain, my only outlet for creativity was molding shitty metal, and as mentioned in the article, I went home and vegged on my bed, weekends were ok given I was still scrounging off my parents (Thanks mum!) so my weekends were for the most part mine, yet nothing ever really came to me until late Sunday evenings when it was time to crash so I could begin my oh so wonderful weekly ritual all over again.
This seemed to become my template for the future, I even hated a job so bad once I told them the chemicals we were using were ruining my lungs so I had to quit (strangely they never asked for a doctors note….hmmmmm) yet over and over again this had become my modus operandi, hell I even buggered up an interview because within 5 minutes I hated the place (much to my mothers annoyance if I remember right)
It wasn’t until I woke up one day in my mid 20’s that I came to realize the horrific truth…. I had stopped writing completely, there wasn’t even those usual napkins, or torn bits of paper with busily written foot notes that I’d not remember just what the hell I was prattling on about the following day, laying all over my desk… nothing… just a couple of cheesy porn mags I stole from my parents shop (it’s not stealing if it’s from your dads own collection… that I think he kept instead of sending back… but still it helps me sleep at night)
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be two main things in the future, a paleontologist and/or a writer, as a 6-8…..maybe 16 years old I spent a lot of my time under the house digging for dinosaur bones (I only ever found cat shit to be honest… and no it wasn’t petrified, but you could throw it into your neighbors backyard pretty easily without it breaking apart) but my father told me to get a real job, I wasn’t smart enough to become a paleontologist and being a writer wasn’t a real job, I needed to get a real job like him in construction! you know…. a real job….still on the upside a few years ago before he passed away, he did actually tell me that he was sorry for what he had said about writing… after my Uncle had become a very well off Comic book, and fiction writer (he actually has a movie coming out soon based on one of his books) but at least he admitted he was wrong in that regard…. he never told me he was sorry for telling me I wasn’t smart enough to become a paleontologist though…..
Anyway as the years slipped by I went from real job to real job and was miserable in each and every damn one of them, nothing ever really made me want to stand on the edge and scream to the heavens that in my soul I was truly happy… it never came truth be told, but I did grow older, 5 jobs turns to 10 then onward to possibly 15 I’m not actually sure these days, I just know if I were to put down every job on my resume…. it would probably come out around 4 pages…… minimum I think.
What I did garnish from my experiences…. and maybe I had to get older to realizing it and/or appreciate it maybe? was that this was life, as it states in the article below am I going to succeed? no probably not, but there’s no harm in trying, and when I do… you can bet you Aunts bloomers I’ll be on the other side drinking a fucking expensive beer and flipping off the world of “Get a real job because writing is just a hobby” fucktards.
Check out the link, it’s good, better written than my POS (I can write fiction, but I kinda suck at writing blogs… hence I don’t write them that often) that and I have this weird obsession with using ( and ) not sure why… bit at least I don’t use them in my stories…
Peace.
CD