Allow me to wine, dine, and stand-up 69

69th post in most likely over a year of blogging.

Man, that is some slack shit. Right now I'm hanging out at my parents house in west palm beach, probably for one of the last times. I'm writing this on my sister's laptop, and quite honestly, after about a year back on a desktop, writing on a laptop keyboard is a giant pain in the ass. I'm waiting for everyone to get done with their family dinners so we can go out and try and have a fun evening in a boring town. I'm hoping that my years of living here have endowed me with some sort of wisdom and experience that I can apply to my writing, but even lately that's been unsuccessful. Maybe I'm just not channeling the right experiences. Maybe I should just say "fuck it" and write a memoir. I feel like my life has at least been entertaining and interesting enough to do so. I feel like over the past 15 years of living in Florida, I've been imparted with an uncanny ability to describe the human condition. I feel like this is everything I was born to do. I was born to bring to light things people have never thought of before, and the idea of that is both enthralling and terrifying at the same time.

Enthralling because I feel like I can impart ideas and capture people's imaginations the way the Rowling, and Gaiman, and Bukowski, and Klosterman, and even more recently Fowles did for me. Because, hey, maybe I can write that sentence that makes some awkward teenager go "wait, fuccccccckkkkk" the way all of those writers did for me. Maybe I can be the person who juxtaposes the profound with the ridiculous like Dave Barry did for his generation. Maybe I really can be a great writer and a profound thinker like I aspire to be.

But with all of that, it's still mildly terrifying. Terrifying to know that I'm just as capable of fucking everything up. Terrifying to know that the career I've chose to undertake is one that has a pretty low success rate. But it's something I have to do. I feel like I have this unmistakable talent that few of my peers do.

Time to get shit rolling.

-Joe

I guess you didn't get the note on your nightstand about setting the house on fire

So, I guess I've taken one of those accidental hiatuses that seem to happen all the fucking time. Sorry. Really. I'll try harder next time. I swearz it.

Anyway, so much random garbage has happened since the last time I updated this rock that I don't feel obligated to make a catch up entry for the three people who read this. In fact, as I sit here, I have no fucking idea what to write about honestly. I've got a million other things on my mind actually. I've recently begun to undertake the gigantic project of trying to clean up my room so I can limit the distractions available once I decide to get cracking on the general landfill worth of ultimately pointless and completely unnecessary school assignments that are due in the coming days and weeks. So, instead of honing my actual craft and working on trying to publish a book, I'm stuck throwing together a mock business plan with idiots and tools who look to me to organize everything because I'm the only one in our group with any sort of brain stem, for a restaurant that I ultimately have no interest in ever seen through to creation. On the same train of thought, instead of working on this novella that I was, at one point, in the process of writing (and can no longer work on until the end of the semester), I'm stuck writing several papers that, ultimately, are not of interest to anyone. These papers will be read once by the professor (maybe) and definitely not by me, because I never read papers after I am finished with them. Hell, I don't even proofread papers. Ever. I can't honestly remember the last time I proofread a paper. I think it's honestly quite a waste of time because it doesn't sound like me after I correct it. So whatever, fuck it. Proofreading is for ninnies. I'll take my B for grammar and mechanics and discard the comment of "proofread more carefully" on every paper because it's just not that important to me. I feel like lack of proofreading is my silent protest. It's like the big "fuck you" to all of these academic assholes who assign papers that really have no sort of practical application to the world at large.

In fact, the only thing that these stupid analysis papers are actually good for is preparing you for grad school. And, the funny part about that is that once you get out of grad school, you inevitably go become a teacher (because really, what sort of job are you getting with a masters or a doctorate in English?), and then you go and torture kids with similar retarded and pointless papers. It's the circle of fucking life. You're abused by your parents, and then you grow up and abuse your kids. Maybe this is why I hate 99% of the people in my major; they are just in it to forcibly penetrate the assholes of previously well meaning (although probably completely pretentious) kids with utter garbage like Gulliver's Travels and Justine over and over again.

It's all the same, and nothing changes.

-Joe