Good lord... I should either be writing or asleep, but I can't seem to do either. I just read this article, and it didn't seem to help any. Two years ago, my friend Matt and I were both more or less starting from nothing. We were both pretty miserable, but we were working together on this little website called Savant and chatting pretty regularly about how much of a struggle everything was. The difference was, I was working a steady job in sales and he was struggling with his design studio. He and his girlfriend were in dire straits, and I had just endured a series of miserable relationships, if you can call them that.
Now, he's happily married, owns part of his own thriving media company, he's writing for, you know, money, and travelling all over the world. Me? I'm working a shit job for pennies, struggling to get published, still enduring a series of miserable relationships, my health is questionable (and my insurance non-existent), and I'm swimming in debt.
It makes me want to eat broken glass.
What the hell happened?
Matt once told me perhaps the most depressing thing I'd ever heard, which is that life is pain, interrupted by moments of happiness. At the time, I had refused to believe this philosophy, because it seemed so nihilistic, but subsequently it infiltrated my thinking to a degree that I can't tell where the theory starts and the practice ends. It's become pervasive for me, but I have to wonder whether young Matt feels the same way anymore. I'd ask him, but we almost never speak anymore. He's just too busy, and so am I, but in entirely different ways.
It doesn't help that I've been reading the latest issue of Esquire, which is their annual "What I've Learned" issue, wherein fabulously successful people all say about the same thing, which is that achieving success is a state of mind. Well, what sort of thing is that for, say, me to read, or better yet, some dirt poor kid in the African desert? Maybe they're right, but it seems like a catch-22 to me.
I don't know. I'm mainly writing this for myself, so that, someday, I can either look back on it as the point when it felt like I'd gone so far into the tunnel that I'd lost the light from both ends, or I'll see it as the point when I'd realized the tunnel was a dead-end and there was no going back. (Or perhaps just the day when I'd finally abused metaphors to death.) I don't expect life to be handed to me on a silver platter, but it would be nice to get the occasional good break that I could stow away to keep me going until the next one.
Then again, it's entirely possible that I just don't know appreciate the good breaks I've got. I don't know.
What I do know is that I really shouldn't compare myself to Matty. I mean, as much as I admire what he's achieved and obtained, I shouldn't model myself after him. I always get myself into trouble when I try to emulate and imitate people. But then, in the absence of a good role model or a mentor, it's practically impossible to find your own route without at least some of that. So I wind up back at square one. (And don't think that I resent his success. I'm happy for him, I really am; I just wish I had the slightest clue how we ended up in such different places. Not to mention barely speaking to one another.)
About the only time I'm really happy is when I'm writing, but I seem to get so little of that done lately because I'm either trying to cover too many bases or fretting about the quality of what I've done. It's a bit like writing my way up my own ass. (Kind of like what I'm doing here, I suspect.)
I don't know. I think too much. And the trouble with that is that it tends to lead in circles, so if I'm depressed, I just get even moreso. The best thing to do is just cut it off before it gets out of control. So I'm going to bed.
Anyway, congrats, Matt...
Now, he's happily married, owns part of his own thriving media company, he's writing for, you know, money, and travelling all over the world. Me? I'm working a shit job for pennies, struggling to get published, still enduring a series of miserable relationships, my health is questionable (and my insurance non-existent), and I'm swimming in debt.
It makes me want to eat broken glass.
What the hell happened?
Matt once told me perhaps the most depressing thing I'd ever heard, which is that life is pain, interrupted by moments of happiness. At the time, I had refused to believe this philosophy, because it seemed so nihilistic, but subsequently it infiltrated my thinking to a degree that I can't tell where the theory starts and the practice ends. It's become pervasive for me, but I have to wonder whether young Matt feels the same way anymore. I'd ask him, but we almost never speak anymore. He's just too busy, and so am I, but in entirely different ways.
It doesn't help that I've been reading the latest issue of Esquire, which is their annual "What I've Learned" issue, wherein fabulously successful people all say about the same thing, which is that achieving success is a state of mind. Well, what sort of thing is that for, say, me to read, or better yet, some dirt poor kid in the African desert? Maybe they're right, but it seems like a catch-22 to me.
I don't know. I'm mainly writing this for myself, so that, someday, I can either look back on it as the point when it felt like I'd gone so far into the tunnel that I'd lost the light from both ends, or I'll see it as the point when I'd realized the tunnel was a dead-end and there was no going back. (Or perhaps just the day when I'd finally abused metaphors to death.) I don't expect life to be handed to me on a silver platter, but it would be nice to get the occasional good break that I could stow away to keep me going until the next one.
Then again, it's entirely possible that I just don't know appreciate the good breaks I've got. I don't know.
What I do know is that I really shouldn't compare myself to Matty. I mean, as much as I admire what he's achieved and obtained, I shouldn't model myself after him. I always get myself into trouble when I try to emulate and imitate people. But then, in the absence of a good role model or a mentor, it's practically impossible to find your own route without at least some of that. So I wind up back at square one. (And don't think that I resent his success. I'm happy for him, I really am; I just wish I had the slightest clue how we ended up in such different places. Not to mention barely speaking to one another.)
About the only time I'm really happy is when I'm writing, but I seem to get so little of that done lately because I'm either trying to cover too many bases or fretting about the quality of what I've done. It's a bit like writing my way up my own ass. (Kind of like what I'm doing here, I suspect.)
I don't know. I think too much. And the trouble with that is that it tends to lead in circles, so if I'm depressed, I just get even moreso. The best thing to do is just cut it off before it gets out of control. So I'm going to bed.
Anyway, congrats, Matt...
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