So. Writing. And Work.

November 30, 2006
Filed under:Real

I actually wrote this in an email to a friend, but then figured I’d not only like more concrete documentation of this line of thinking than an item in my “Sent” folder, but that I’d like to share it with more than just one person.

I’ve been doing lots of thinking about this kind of shit in the last few weeks/months. I’ve even written about it before, but probably in one of the other blogs and not JH, and it’s getting to be something of an issue in Life.

See, the thing is, unlike a great many, I actually Know where my passions lie. And, also unlike a great many, I’m starting to learn that I may actually have a talent for them. Much like you, El Puerco, and my amazing and wonderful wife, I’m pretty good at this writing thing. And I wanna do it, like all the time �n stuff.

Then there’s work. I am in the Fucking IT field, and Yes I capitalise it because it means that to me, where I am good at what I do and can be quite successful if I choose to be. I’ve seen how it happens and I know what to do to make it a reality.

At the end of the day, what will I have?

More money, sure, but kids that have grown without me knowing and a wife who knows that I love her� on the weekends. Needless to say, Not for me. And I mean, No Fucking Way In Hell for me, thanks.

I drive to work, fighting retarded commuter traffic, and work 9 to 5 like the rest of the slobbering shitwipes in the Rat Race, and then I go home, where Life really is. I have about 2 hours with my kids, playing on the floor and watching the Simpsons, but they gotta eat and it takes them for fucking ever sometimes, so it’s really about an hour or so. Then, it’s another 2 or so hours with Wife and then bed. Then, get up in the morning, get the boy’s lunch and their brekky ready and then do it all over again.

Is it worth it? Welp, gotta pay bills and eat. There you go.

Thing is, you don’t see a lot of time for writing in there do you? Nup.

I’m fine with that, for now, because I wouldn’t trade my time with my family for anything in the World, and I gotta be at work at least 8 hours in order to make enough money to eat and have a house and shoes n’ shit. There’s no time to write, but my time is buying some important things. Again� for now.

I’m not sure what you’ve got for a social life, but if you’ve got the time, then WRITE. Do it. Write as much as you can and as often as you can. I’m not one for dropping names (�cept Russell Crowe and that’s only because I like to say that I heard his cock stinks) but I actually used to correspond with Augusten Burroughs, who wrote some of my favourite books and is a #1 bestselling author and I think is even making a movie or something. He’s special and famous and shit, and gave ME writing advice, cos I really AM that cool (someday I’ll write about that time I met the Brit Asshole from American Idol and thought he was somebody I knew from hockey. Heh. Classic).

His advice though, was basically just what I told you: Write. Alla time. Always.

You’ll get better at it the more you do it as well as be busy building a repertoire, a repository, a bunch of cool shit that you can someday do something with. You’ll be able to have enough examples of random shit that anyone possibly interested could even think of.

Somebody at a newspaper says, “Can yeh write up somebody’s obit?” and you say casually, “Actually, just to be morbid and because I was pissed at him for that crack about my grades in High School… here’s my father’s. Oh, he’s not really dead either, so you can ask him how good that one is. Ignore the paragraph about the cause of death being a flame-engulfed kayak paddle to the rectum and you’ll find it’s actually pretty accurate.”

I’ve even got me a blog where I write nothing but the shit from my brain. And by “shit” I mean “excrement” coz that’s what it is. Shit. But it needs out and it feels cool to get it out and be partially entertained by it. Nobody reads that one, ‘cept Wife, and that’s how I like it.

See? Even writing Shit is still good for writing skilz. Fuck, do like the Smartypants chick and just stick it all in a book. Hell, call blog entries chapters and you would barely need to edit.

So that’s my advice. Same as Augusten’s and he’s brilliant and if I met him in person I’d kiss him full on the lips and I don’t care that he loves smokin’ him some pole. No tongue tho cos I’m married.

I honestly don’t know how long for the corporate world in the Information Age I am. I mean, all up, I still just make fucking websites, it’s not like I’m curing Cancer or curing anything cool with the word “genital” in it. Ask Wife, I still lay in bed some nights and piss and moan about this career, vowing to chuck it all in and not care if the 4 (soon to be 5) of us huddle under a goddam scrap of cardboard as long as we’re happy, and all that.

Life’s too short to wait too long for the really, Really, good shit. If you’re anything like me, then writing is your Really Good Shit, or at least can provide for it, and you need to Get On It.

Fuck, I’ve sat here through my lunch break writing this and now I’m all ready to just jump up, tip my desk over, throw my monitor out the window and onto the odd Korean who sells me Sausage Rolls, and fucking go home and write a book that will feed me and my family for the next 37 years.

When I haven’t, and it’s 5:30, and I’ve finished yet another fucking website, and I’m headed home, and I’m tuning in the traffic report to see whether or not to avoid the Graham Farmer Freeway, please don’t ask me why I didn’t. Don’t or I’ll fart on you. And lately they’ve been a weird combination of sweet cigar and rotten cabbage, with a hint of nutmeg. It isn’t worth it.

I’ll get to it soon. Serious. Just not sure when, but it’ll happen. Ask Wife, I get that look in my eye, and she knows it’ll happen.

Shatsicles, I gotta get back to it.

Take care o’ you.