A failed novelist, short story writer, blogger, essayist and poet all walk into a bar… and are all the same person, who also happens to be writing this

They say you should “write what you know.” I don’t know who “they” are, though, so I suppose I can’t write about them. In fact I don’t know much about anything. It’s not that I’m significantly more ignorant than anybody else on the planet. I just acknowledge it.

I don’t even know a whole lot about myself, as I only know myself from my experience of myself. That experience comes from only one perspective, one viewpoint — my own. It’s like driving a sports car with no mirrors. There are a lot of blind spots and everything’s moving much too fast to make any kind of informed, responsible decisions about anything. So for a long time I figured I couldn’t even write about myself, such as logic dictated.

Instead, I wrote about other things. Specifically, I wrote about ideas, and I wrote about fictional worlds I created. My rationale was that while I didn’t know if my ideas about ideas were accurate, I knew about certain ideas. And if I created a world and characters in my own mind, I knew about them and therefore could write about them.

Only, nobody was all that interested in reading about them.

So here I am, writing about myself. Or, more accurately, writing about my own experience of myself.

I don’t know why. If my problem is convincing people to read anything I write, I don’t see how the inane ramblings of a failed novelist, poet, essayist, blogger and short writer (and anything else that vaguely requires a pen and a sheet of paper to make contact with one another). I don’t really expect anybody to care about what I think or have to say. I’m a nobody. And I’ve come to accept my destiny as a perpetually defeated bum writer. Perhaps if I had been born with the kind of karma to have a reality TV show where I get paid significant sums of money to live a caricaturized life, maybe someone would care enough to read something I write. But I wasn’t born with that kind of karma, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms, numerous times over the past 13 years that my writing is shit and nobody is interested in anything I have to say.

It’s fine really. I hop I don’t come across as bitter or frustrated or even disappointed. I’m beyond that now. I’ve worked though it. I’ve wrestled with my grief. And while the match was long, one-sided and left me worse fo rthe wear, I eventually came out on top. It was a victory wholly reliant on abject stamina. Grief ripped my bowels clean out with its bare claws and whipped me mercilessly with my small intestine, but the fucker had no heart. Eventually he just got tired or bored or both. Perhaps grief even started to just feel bad for me. I wouldn’t say I’m a masochist, I just couldn’t give up for some reason. That, too, simply wasn’t part of my karma.

So here I am. Writing again. This time for no reason at all, really. I have some vague notion of what I want this project to be. A memoir of some kind. Perhaps a thorough inventory of my admittedly limited life experiences will produce some sort of lesson, or perform as some kind of sad and bewildering cautionary tale, at least. Personally, I feel like it’s a subjective record of one man’s spiritual journey toward what some would call “enlightenment,” but what he simply calls “everyday bullshit nonsense.”

If nothing else, it’s a fulfillment of Kerouac’s idea that we should all write our own stories about our own lives so that we could leave them to our children and loved ones. Then we can know all about each others’ adventures and increase our closeness and intimacy with each other and all that shit.

Yeah, that’s it. Even if no other soul ever lays eyes on this sucker, maybe my wife and kids will experience a fleeting interest in where this grumpy gremlin they have had to put up with for all of these years came from.

No, there are no raw feelings here. Just a neutral acknowledgement of the truth. By most accounts I’m a nobody. Worthy not even of a cursory glance as you pass by me at some godawful strip mall at the edges of some desolate Denver suburb. As I said, I’m not a reality star, or a youtube celebrity, or a social media influenza, or a guru of any kind, or rich, or successful by any American measure. Hell, by and large I’ve never even left my little corner of the universe. Of course, nobody ever really does. Wherever you go, so they say, there you are, still stuck in that existentially inescapable corner that is “you.” But even beyond that, I’ve never left the corner of the state of Colorado where I live, in its own niche of the United States of America, in its own nook of the planet earth, itself in its own cranny of the galaxy in its own crevice of the Universe, and so on.

In short, I’m the epitome of a boring, “normal,” unremarkable person — unrefined, uncultured and woefully inexperienced. But you know what? Maybe that’s the exact reason I should write. It’s easy to pretend to be profound when you’re a gazillionaire like Oprah Winfrey. Or when youre some bland dweeb who’s friends Oprah, like Deepak Chopra or Tim Storey. Or when your entire shtick is how enlightened you are when you’re nothing some creepy, see-through phony like Eckhart Tolle.

No. I’m simply happy. I can give myself that. I may be the grumpiest, moaning-est person I know. But I’m content as hell with that shit. In fact, most of the times when I’m not enjoying life are the when I’m not allowed to be miserable. And what I’m trying to say is: doesn’t that mean something? What good is your outlook on life if it only works when you’re a born winner, when the gods are on your side? Should a reasonably effective life philosophy be most useful when the fates are ornery as hell, and when you’re a perennial loser? Because I’ve got some terrible, miserable, godawful news for anybody unlucky enough to stumble across this godforsaken text (sorry mom) — and that’s that your life, regardless of how adventurous, bold and intrepid you feel you’ve been, your life has more in common with my life than whatever life your little monkey brain imagines Oprah is living.

Therefore you can waste your Sundays watching Oprah speaking on a throne somewhere in some immaculate, unsullied field with some pseudo-spiritual geek windbag lying about how peaceful and easy life will be once you follow their 8 stupid rules, or some shit, or you can waste it with me. Either way, you’re wasting time and life, but at least I won’t lie to you.

Hell, I might even throw in some crappy poetry, just because.