I knew this day would come, but I didn’t expect it to take so long in its arrival. I knew that I wouldn’t really start to get going on what I wanted to write until I had no time left to do it. It’s not really a surprise then that everything seems to be blowing up in my face just as I am on the verge of actually getting something accomplished. Not a full-length novel, mind you, but at least something that isn’t just the blog, something that I might be able to convince people to purchase. I thought the day would come sometime back in January, but it seems the gods of apathy had other things in mind for me. Whatever. I’m still going to finishing working on it, and then I’m going to see what I can do to try to make a little money. It’s taking all my will to keep from falling back down into the depths of despair, and every ounce of ego to tell myself that I should keep working at it. A lesser (or smarter) man might have given up by now, with his entire life snowballing into ruin. But not me. I’ve been putting this off for decades, and I don’t think that I’ll ever muster up the courage to try again if I don’t follow through this time.

I asked my wife before I began this little adventure of mine, if she believed in me, if she thought that I could do it. I know that rough Spanish translations are a poor substitute to showcase my abilities, but it was all I had to work with. Even then, she told me that she believed, and for the first time in what seemed like nearly forever and a day, I almost thought that I could do it. I just wish that I had managed to get back into form a little sooner. And that I had socked away some money back when I was making it. I know that I can pull this out (I have always known it), but I cannot seem to adequately explain it to my wife. We are both stressed out about what the near-future holds, and the best that I can offer her is that I’m pretty sure that everything will be okay. I mean, I have a track record of always landing on my feet, but the cynic inside me says that only means that I am due to finally taste the sweet agony of complete and utter failure.

Maybe it’s just a side effect of my mental illness, this delusion that I should, or could, do this for a living. I mean, who’s to say that this isn’t just a particularly deluded fantasy of mine which might better be relegated to the status of a hobby? Except that I have known down to the deepest part of me since I was just a boy that it was going to be this path or nothing. In school, while I saw everyone around me plagued with doubt about the lives they were desperately trying to decide between, I floated by upon a cloud of certainty that I knew what I was doing. Maybe this is my greatest sin of all: pride. Or self-delusion, whatever you want to call it. I have to be right, and more often than not, I am. But now is not the time for me to learn that I am fallible. Or maybe it’s the best time, philosophically, but I can’t let myself think like that. There will be plenty of time to learn that I am just as capable of committing errors when the stakes aren’t quite so high.

On a happier note, if I was forced to guess my progress with the story I am working on, I’d probably have to say that I am almost halfway done. I shot past the roadblock that had been causing me so many problems, and now it’s just a matter of finishing up the flashback and trying it all together with the ending of the story. The only thing that is giving me problems now is the massive tonal shift in the original. I liked the juxtaposition then, but I’m not sure if I can make it work this time. To be fair, I like telling myself that something is impossible when I’m fairly certain that it’s not so that when I finally pull it off, I can pat myself on the back and feel like a miracle worker. I’m relearning how to write fiction again, and I should have started with that from the very beginning, as the odds that someone would read the random things I write about here on the blog and decide that they wanted to pay me to do it for them were always nonexistent. But at least I’ve gotten faster at transferring thought to page, which has helped me with writing in general.

To tie everything back in together, I guess what I’ve been trying to spit out is that I know that the majority of the work that I do when I am writing is nearly indistinguishable from just lounging about. But I am always mulling over what my next move is, or distracting myself from focusing directly on the problem so that the answer comes to me more organically. When I’m reading, I’m actually taking classes in advanced creative writing. When I’m watching television, I’m soaking the interplay of characters and themes. When I’m listening to music, I’m… well I’m usually just grooving to the music, but putting myself in the mood is also important. But none of this is making me a dime, at least not yet. I have nothing to show for my efforts aside from a crumbling relationship and the looming threat of a nervous breakdown. I need to knuckle down and become the little writer who could. I’m pretty sure that I can do it. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen if I’m wrong?