The Wallowing Piece

Sometimes writing feels like such an awful chore. It's hard, it's taxing, it's time consuming. To sit down and try to produce something takes more effort than I have to offer sometimes. And I'm also back in my mindset of not wanting to write anything at all, which is rather disconcerting because that mindset leaves me with no options.

I've been failing so much and for so long. A quick glance at the number of years I've had this blog up and running helps everyone chart the course of my failures in my personal work. But now that I'm failing professionally, too, I find myself wanting to retreat into a hole.

Am I even a writer at all? Do I even want to be? Maybe I'm just a failure and I should bide my time until I shrivel up and die.

This all sounds very dramatic I know. But I'm extraordinarily depressed these days between my illness and my career struggles, my lack of family and my lack of direction. I've never known what I wanted to do with my life and I find myself in that same place, wondering what a feasible option is for me to make a living as I move forward into my new existence.

And I can't come up with anything. I did tests, I read articles. I've done this for years and I just can't come up with anything.

I come up with things that I like to do but nothing that I want to do all of the time. Or that I feel like I can do and make a decent living at. Writing has always been one of the few options available to me that I could transform into money. But these days, with the proliferation of wannabe writers, cheap labor, etc...well I just can't seem to make it anymore. Not when Uncle Sam requires me to pay a tax rate that is now double that of a corporation, but then said corporation won't pay me enough to be able to survive. Let's not forget said corporation won't offer me any benefits, either.

The life of a freelance writer really can suck. I think I realized it early on, and that's why I took a long-term role with a company that had me doing things that I didn't want to do: I just couldn't make a living as a writer. I couldn't. I tried, and I couldn't.

So what made me think that I could again? And now, what makes me think that I even want to?

Some people have a calling and a drive to do something and maybe it's been there their entire lives, or maybe it hasn't. I have nothing. Nada. Zilch. This goes back a long way and maybe it has to do with a total lack of confidence in myself and my abilities. Maybe.

Or maybe life is just a wad of stress for me and that's how it's going to be.

I wrote this piece and I wrote something yesterday, but I wrote them out of anger and frustration and depression. I was and I am wallowing. I can sure write when I want to wallow, but who wants to read that?

The Rejected Writer

Almost two months ago I made some goals for myself and I've spent the last eight weeks or so hustling like crazy. Networking, applying, praying, searching. And the net result of all of these things is that I'm kind of a reject. I've been getting a lot of "No" and a lot of silence after having some momentary interest that breathed life into my flailing ego.

I think that after almost 10 straight months of rejections I'm about at the end of my ability to absorb them. I'm also worrying about things like money, purpose, lost time, and what the heck to do with my days going forward. How do I work around this illness of mine? What can I do besides communications? Anything?

I know that I'm a good writer but I'm starting to feel like there is no place for me to work as one anymore. The market is too congested, labor is too cheap, the value of the written word seems to have declined. I wonder if I'll need to keep my writing to my private time, in the moments when I feel inspired, and try to find somewhere else to devote my energy to during the day.

I have no idea what that might be and I also know that I'll probably fall back into looking for jobs in a few days. But for now, I'm exhausted and dejected and lost. I'm like a balloon with a slow leak, except now I'm all the way down to a wrinkled mass of rubber.

I have a deep fear of being trapped, and office jobs make me feel trapped. I think it comes from my controlling childhood and all of the turmoil of my twenties. I vacillate between staying the course or changing entirely, always wondering if I've somehow missed the mark on the thing I'm supposed to be doing with my life.

Because isn't life supposed to work out a little better if you're doing the think you're supposed to be doing?

I don't know. Maybe and maybe not.

I'm to the point where I'm not sure if I'm supposed to press on through the failure or throw up my hands and walk away. I got to this place once with yoga teaching, and I eventually stomped off into the setting sun. Am I there again now? With the one real skill I feel that I have?

Am I all washed up?