I feel the need to break something.
Ten minutes ago, I was cooking some soup. Split pea, if you must know, and the spoon I was using fell onto the floor, making a small but frustrating mess. I really, really wanted to just chuck that spoon across the room. Somehow, I managed not to.
This is not, in case you're concerned, simply about the soup. I've been thinking about breaking things all day. At about 1 o'clock, I got an e-mail from an editor informing me that my comic project had been shot down. I suppose, if things were going better, I could just brush this off, but they haven't and I can't.
I had the idea for the piece about two years ago, and in my mind, it's been about the only decent concept I've come up with in that time. I nursed it, rewrote it, forgot about it, resurrected it and finally put it into working shape. It was, in my mind, the best hope I had for getting something published, and right now I just don't have a clue what to do next.
But this is about more than just the project. This has been a fairly lousy week of dashed expectations and spoiled plans, and to top it off, I've got some sort of nasty cold that isn't helping my disposition at all. Honestly, this seems to be a pattern of rejection going back for a while now that is just festering like an infection. I know that it's a problem of focus, I know that. I know that all I need is a good "It's a Wonderful Life"-type intervention to make me realize all the things I do have, but at the same time, I can't help but feel stymied about these issues that I haven't been able to overcome or resolve, and it's dragging me down. They're all I can focus on anymore.
In college, I fell into the writer/editor profession with considerable success. I can't see how I missed it in hindsight, but it's really the only thing I excel at. Everything I tackled in that area succeeded beyond my expectations. I started out as a lowly editorial writer, and within a week, I was made columnist. In just a few months, I was assistant editor and then editor. I was writing two columns a week sometimes, one for the opinion page and the entertainment page. I was writing articles and interviewing my heroes.
One of these heroes, Al Franken told me the secret, in his opinion, to finding success: You discover what you love, you find like-minded people, someone gets a break, and that friend helps his other friends... and so on. It seemed like a reasonable plan, coming from someone who ought to know.
Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed of working for Saturday Night Live, and though those dreams have changed somewhat, the concept remains the same. I've always wanted to be amongst a tight-knit group of people working towards a common goal, where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. But ever since college, that fate has eluded me, to the point where I've now seen numerous "friends" go off to astronomical success, without the slighest interest in helping out anyone but themselves.
Maybe that's my mistake. Maybe I shouldn't be relying on others to help me out, but I don't see how it can be done otherwise. As the saying goes, it's not what you know, but who you know. Apparently I just don't know the right people. It's either that or the only other conclusion left: that I'm just not cut out for it.
One early acquaintance that I made who has since gone off to considerable success herself once made the snarky comment that I'm doomed to "always be the bridesmaid..." People tell me her career is an abberation, a freak occurrance, but I'm more upset about the fact that I haven't been able to get just one fucking break to her fifty. This proposal was, I thought, my one best shot, and now it's dead.
If this all sounds like self-pity, well, tough. I'm entitled a little of that. I hope it doesn't go on too long, and that I'm able to move on, because I've laid in bed staring at the ceiling about as much as any human can. But in this state of mind, I can't exactly seem to see how I'm supposed to keep going. Nor do I care. I am way too close to throwing in the towel and saying fuck it. Life would be a lot easier without all these high hopes and delusions of grandeur to worry about. Maybe I could be a regular joe like everyone else, who just wants to go do his eight hours at a menial job, get a paycheck and drink beer and watch TV.
Can't a guy get a break?
Ten minutes ago, I was cooking some soup. Split pea, if you must know, and the spoon I was using fell onto the floor, making a small but frustrating mess. I really, really wanted to just chuck that spoon across the room. Somehow, I managed not to.
This is not, in case you're concerned, simply about the soup. I've been thinking about breaking things all day. At about 1 o'clock, I got an e-mail from an editor informing me that my comic project had been shot down. I suppose, if things were going better, I could just brush this off, but they haven't and I can't.
I had the idea for the piece about two years ago, and in my mind, it's been about the only decent concept I've come up with in that time. I nursed it, rewrote it, forgot about it, resurrected it and finally put it into working shape. It was, in my mind, the best hope I had for getting something published, and right now I just don't have a clue what to do next.
But this is about more than just the project. This has been a fairly lousy week of dashed expectations and spoiled plans, and to top it off, I've got some sort of nasty cold that isn't helping my disposition at all. Honestly, this seems to be a pattern of rejection going back for a while now that is just festering like an infection. I know that it's a problem of focus, I know that. I know that all I need is a good "It's a Wonderful Life"-type intervention to make me realize all the things I do have, but at the same time, I can't help but feel stymied about these issues that I haven't been able to overcome or resolve, and it's dragging me down. They're all I can focus on anymore.
In college, I fell into the writer/editor profession with considerable success. I can't see how I missed it in hindsight, but it's really the only thing I excel at. Everything I tackled in that area succeeded beyond my expectations. I started out as a lowly editorial writer, and within a week, I was made columnist. In just a few months, I was assistant editor and then editor. I was writing two columns a week sometimes, one for the opinion page and the entertainment page. I was writing articles and interviewing my heroes.
One of these heroes, Al Franken told me the secret, in his opinion, to finding success: You discover what you love, you find like-minded people, someone gets a break, and that friend helps his other friends... and so on. It seemed like a reasonable plan, coming from someone who ought to know.
Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed of working for Saturday Night Live, and though those dreams have changed somewhat, the concept remains the same. I've always wanted to be amongst a tight-knit group of people working towards a common goal, where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. But ever since college, that fate has eluded me, to the point where I've now seen numerous "friends" go off to astronomical success, without the slighest interest in helping out anyone but themselves.
Maybe that's my mistake. Maybe I shouldn't be relying on others to help me out, but I don't see how it can be done otherwise. As the saying goes, it's not what you know, but who you know. Apparently I just don't know the right people. It's either that or the only other conclusion left: that I'm just not cut out for it.
One early acquaintance that I made who has since gone off to considerable success herself once made the snarky comment that I'm doomed to "always be the bridesmaid..." People tell me her career is an abberation, a freak occurrance, but I'm more upset about the fact that I haven't been able to get just one fucking break to her fifty. This proposal was, I thought, my one best shot, and now it's dead.
If this all sounds like self-pity, well, tough. I'm entitled a little of that. I hope it doesn't go on too long, and that I'm able to move on, because I've laid in bed staring at the ceiling about as much as any human can. But in this state of mind, I can't exactly seem to see how I'm supposed to keep going. Nor do I care. I am way too close to throwing in the towel and saying fuck it. Life would be a lot easier without all these high hopes and delusions of grandeur to worry about. Maybe I could be a regular joe like everyone else, who just wants to go do his eight hours at a menial job, get a paycheck and drink beer and watch TV.
Can't a guy get a break?
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