Am I Using My Craft Good

I'm trying to encourage people to read and write. It's that simple. Learning to read and write is extraordinarily difficult. It takes years of practice. But the ability to read anything you want and write anything you want is a fuckin superpower.

It allows you to climb up life a lot easier than if you suck at it. We think we're done learning when we graduate high school or maybe university. That's wrong. At school, they're imprinting pathways onto your mind of how to learn. It doesn't matter what books they use to teach you, Macbeth or Animal Farm, they're showing your brain how to learn.

Then we're all let loose on the world for better or worse, left to deal with shit as best we can. The pressure's on. If you read something online and infer the wrong message it can have disasterous consequences. If you write a post that people take the wrong way, that's most likely the fault of your writing, and again can have disasterous consequences.

We're all given loudspeakers but no one knows how to speak. You think MLK or JFK just stood up and said world-changing speeches without practicing first? None of us were ready for the podium. And now each of us stands individually, alone and afraid on a stage and the whole world is the crowd. Some have your back – some at your throat. The vast majority couldn't give a fuck what you say. But the fact your words can reach so many people is unprecedented in the history of the species.

Our Future's a Baby Turtle

I'm glad I'm a writer. It's the best job in the world. I get to look into everyone else's life, see what they're up to then take my notes home and write a report. It's like being a spy which is what I always wanted to be. It's so cool things worked out. It was a little uncertain and sketchy at times. I idled with depression. Postmodernism thoroughly fucked me at university. I came out a little traumatized and definitely lost.

Well, thank fuck for a decade of love, luck, hard work, and help. I'm in a longterm relationship, I'm self-employed, and managing to hold down an apartment. Just as I got good, the whole world went to shit with a fuckin pandemic, a great depression, and battle lines drawn. Corruption flows through the streets like sewage. Where my future once was now's a bloody horizon, smoke-choked and yellow black. My future is a burning trash mountain sliding into the sea. My future is a baby turtle that's flopped across the beach into the waves only to choke on a straw from a fuckin coke bottle.

But I'm young, restless, and resilient. It'll take more than ruining my generation's future to crush out our hopes. We're a bunch of dreamers, entirely sure that this time we're right. As long as we're not castrated by war or enslaved by the rich, we might actually make it. There ain't no 40-year-secure-mortgage-healthcare-and-dental-for-life, motherfucker. We're all freelancers now. So hold onto your butts, the Revolution's going down.

Words made Flesh

Writing can send you toward that gentle golden light in the sky that fills your belly and warms your heart. Let's sit awhile in front of the hearth, opening our hands to the fire, drawing in comfort and energy. 

I'm gonna do better, it says. I'm gonna be better. It doesn't matter if I've only had a couple hours sleep. It doesn't matter if I feel this way or that. Writing is never cold, hungry, or tired. It doesn't matter how the multi-celled organism that Writing's riding around in feels at this particular moment or that.

Remember, a writer is merely the vessel, the conduit, the cable through which Writing flows. The God of Writing: He is Writing incarnate, Storytelling, Words made flesh. I say He, but it's actually She.

Playing God

What do I wanna write? Whatever I want. That's the beauty of creativity. Creativity gives me a place where I can play God. I can create worlds from ashes and reduce galaxies to dust. I can smell the back-of-the-nose smell of burnt toast or the bright fragrance of freshly cut grass. I can taste the bitterness of coffee or the succulent sweetness of a strawberry. I can make myself cry rivers of tears, thinking of that boy in the second-floor window, or I can laugh at the troop of performing mice, doing cartwheels and somersaults for pieces of cheese.

Inside this 10-cent pen lies the whole universe. Once connected through my hand to my brain, the pen is one the most powerful tools we stoned apes ever came up with. It doesn't matter if I use a pen or pencil or feather or phone, the scratchings I make are the signs of my soul. From one human to another: I know you exist.