Call me Nick. Nicholas Rush. Dr. Nicholas Rush. The brilliant Machiavellian doctor for which I took my alternate ago from during middle school. If anything he is the anti-hero (the Francis Underwood) that I was able to relate to during that period of my life and such I still have a fondness of his less than stellar actions. There was something refreshing in rooting for the villainous and not so moral character of a story. In his character, I saw myself. My perfect middle school self that was looking for somebody to relate to. My fondness of him remains to this day and echoes and shades of him are present in me. Call me Nick.
The future is scary and is rushing up to meet all of us. College in under a year. Our lives in front of us. Set pieces that must be formed and planned now or forever be screwed down the road. At least, that’s how I feel and how it’s being hyped as.
The parents are finally talking about it and asking me about it. My desire to be a journalist taken with a grain of apprehension and worry. “Just how viable is it,” is the thesis of their questions. Do something else, something that makes money, but keep in mind you have to love what you do. Rather hypocritical, but I know their intentions are the best, but yet I honestly cannot see it. For too long have they never talked about the real heavy things except in shouts and punishments and admonishments for how bad grades can ruin your future. Those things, those well meant pieces of advice, now truly sound weird and improper when they are not sad angrily with a stern face. I know parental figures mean well, but sadly it is just too late to take seriously anymore. I try hard to be close to them. That was my new year’s resolution after all, but alas it can only be on the small things, on the small topics of conversation. Never the big and important things. Never had a shoulder to cry on in mum or dad. That role has always been taken by that of friends. Oh friends that I love dearly.
Friends that I have lost, but luckily have again. But yet it is different for I do not feel worthy of his friendship. I failed him. I truly did. I allowed my silence to over come me. What a shit friend of me. I couldn’t even say sorry. I was so struck with fear that anything I say would just ruin it more. God, I’m an idiot. Truly. Not worthy of it. Of any of it. Everyday I will try. Goddamn I will try.
Then there is that little thing called me for which the world runs. Oh money. Or rather the lack of it that surrounds me. The drums of cash and coin sound louder and louder as I am about to enter the real world. It is scary. It truly is. It’s rather hard to be a gadget enthusiast when you can never actually have any of it. The Glasses. The Watch. I am surrounded by people on Twitter who have tons of it and spend on the gadgets that seem to come out every day. What a wrong field for me to choose and fall in love with if I cannot even reach for any of it.
When I was little I was told that I had potential. That I was unique and was smart. Math was a downright breeze. Science appealed to me. I wanted to be an astronaut or a scientist. How things quickly changed. The philosopher and writer now are my ambitions. Never in elementary school did I ever see myself as enjoying to write fiction or fact. Never ever.
“I feel like I’m witnessing the forging of someone who will one day be a very good and well known journalist. I just have this feeling. I’m being genuine, that’s what I feel.” — my Editor-in-Chief
The kindest thing anybody has said to me, but now I am afraid I cannot live up to those words. I do not know if I can live up to those expectations after I was turned down by the Times and every other thing.
Expectations. I no longer am confident in my prose and words and opinions about technology which I truly do love. I do not know if I am good writer or all the success was just by chance and clever planning and publishing at the right time. I do not know and I feel I’m about to let down my dear Editor-in-Chief. I am shaken. I truly am.
I have an addiction. An addiction in numbers. I find safety in numbers. The things that I write are read by tens of thousands of people from all around the world. That fact I am grateful of. That even one person would want to read what I write. However, with any addiction, you need more and more. I need more and more people to read each upcoming piece in order to feel validated. I feel I need to break new records for every piece. If not, I am a failure. In numbers and knowing that people are reading what I write, I am validated. This is my addiction. My addiction for more readers. For higher numbers. Every single time I hit publish. That is why everytime I get an idea in my head I must publish as soon as possible to see the numbers spike higher and higher. If does not spike, I am saddened and I feel as I have failed. That I am a failure. Quality is important and I labor crafting every word, but I also need those numbers.
Either I need higher stats or I need to be validated by the real journalists that I admire from afar. The ones for whom I want to work with in the future. For one or any of them to ever tweet my stuff would mean that I have made it in life.
I am never happy with my work. As soon as the high wears off, it is on to the next article that will get a lot of views and invoke another high. I am never satisfied with my work, in continual pursuit of the next article.
Safety in numbers what a horrible way to live.
Living through words and experiences that are not my own
The phone. I am always seen with a phone where ever I go. What must I possibly be reading on that tiny screen?
I am living. I am living by seeing the conversations of other people, of people that I admire and who I badly desire know I exist. They are tech journalists in New York City. The center of the first world, as I call it. They are like me. They have interests like me. They have the lives that I want. They have other people who exactly like them who share the same interests to the tee. It is everything that I want. I want to know that I am not alone in my interests and passions and joys. Those people, these journalists, these Twitter personalities, I wish surrounded me. I follow their conversations and jokes. I wish, I so badly wish to be a part of it. These are my people that I’ve been wanting my entire life.
Do you know what is sad? When for the majority of your life you have more things in common with the voices that are coming from across the internet into your earbuds? That in these podcasts of lively conversations I feel that I am home, that I am where I should be. That these are the cool people who make feel less unique, less alone. That make me feel that there are other people like me. How sad is it that you feel you have more in common with people you’ve never actually met? That when one person says something another persons responds the exact same snarky way I would.
I am living experiences that are not my own. Experiences via podcasts and tweets and stories and prose and jokes. They are not my own, but I feel I would fit right in. Is that living? Living through somebody else’s words and experiences.Every time I look at my phone I’m in another world. The world that I want to be in.
I live through the internet. The curse of the internet. For the futurist and evangelist of the internet that I am. There is a curse of the internet.
The internet has made me awkward. These so called experiences that I feel, that I wish were my own, are not my own. I’m living through the internet, not through me. Experiences are building and enriching their lives, but not mine. The curse of the internet is that you can escape and find people like you, but you can never ever touch them. The people you have wanted your entire life are oh so close, but so far away.
I live through beautiful works of prose and literature and fiction. For I live through words that were not meant for me. Words that were meant for somebody else, but yet I have pretended as if they were speaking right for me.
The most beautiful thing I’ve ever read was eulogy by the sister of the man who shaped my life so much. Like with the people in the podcasts who I felt at home with, but never met, Steve Jobs was the person who shaped my life so much yet I never met and never will. Is it strange to feel a deep profound sadness for somebody who you’ve never met, but yet has done so much to shape my life in so many little ways.
From Steve, my outlook on love was confirmed. My virtue of virtues:
“Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.”
“He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic.”
This was my idol’s end, his exit from the world. Maybe in his last moments he found the secrets of the universe. Maybe he found happiness and content for all that is beautiful and wonderful in this world. Maybe his life did flash before his eyes and he was happy with it, content with it all:
“Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times…
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
Emails. I’ll always be send them and they’ve have for some inexplicable reason become an important part of my life. Rather they have gained such a meaning to me. For god’s sake I asked somebody out via email. I guess it is a punishment. My curse. My cross that I have to be bare. That the email keeps coming back to me. All because I asked a bloody girl out via email.
I’ve sent a lot of them. All lofty in aspiration asking people to give me a chance to prove myself to them. To the world really. That I am as good as I think I am. That I am worth their time. So that I may find validation in the words that I write.
It hasn’t been working out that well really.
But they explain why I stay up so late. My chronic inability to sleep is because I am always waiting. Always waiting for an email, for a chance to come in. That if I wait just a few more minutes something will happen and then everything will be all right.
I also stay up so late because there is magic in the night. It comes from youth, from all of ours. When the night was mystical and magical, but at the same time scary. Just before the dawn there is so much hope. Hope of what a new day can bring. I wait and wait, longer and longer.
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