(Fuck Oasis)
I've always wanted it to just be a switch. I wanted a day to come where my head would make sense, and I wouldn't hate myself any more, and I could spend the rest of my days leisurely expressing myself.
I've always wanted to be reimbursed for the misery I was forced to endure. I wanted the world to get its shit together, to understand what it did to me, to apologize to me, and to give me a fuckin' break.
I've always wanted large numbers of people to love me. I wanted to fart out a little book and have people love it and adore me and give me movie deals so I'd never have to worry about money and could live however the fuck I wanted.
Exactly none of that will happen.
Living takes work. We live in an irrational world where none of the things we believe about it are true. Sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes shit just happens for no reason. Sometimes there are no right choices.
There is no cosmic mechanism for justice. There is no karma. Being subject to undue pain and misery does not entitle me to anything. It doesn't mean I deserve to have things come easy. It doesn't mean people owe me special consideration.
Success is not given. Prestige is not automatic, and is rarely based on any actual skill or accomplishment. It happens often enough by sheer dumb luck to make it essentially worthless. I am not guaranteed an audience just because I'm a fragile, unique soul.
If I want this, and I know I do, then I have to put in the work. I have to understand that, while the work I've put into simply surviving is substantial and valid, it is not the same as working at my craft. That takes time and effort. It take rote practice and perseverance and self-doubt and criticism and the same unbreakable mindset that has kept me alive to see 30.
Art takes work. Life takes work. I have to accept that it takes work, and I have to put forth the work, and the more time I spend looking back and counting up all the bits and pieces of me that I've lost, and being angry and hurt about what I did and didn't get, is more time that I allow it to take from me.
I am done letting it win. I am done looking back. I have to keep telling myself that, to keep pushing myself out of this still-born chrysalis in which I've made my home for the past decade. I have to keep at it because writing it in a blog post alone is not enough. It takes practice. It takes effort.
It takes work.
