I Am Not A Writer
An excerpt from my journal
Prologue
This is an entry from my daily journal. These sorts of thoughts have held me back from even attempting to be who I want to be. For years I believed these words to be true. I’m sharing them here in hopes that the lunacy of it all can be helpful to someone else, someone who feels a longing in their soul to be more than they believe that they are.
I’m not a writer.
Sure, I can write. I can tap into my rather ludicrous reservoir of large and obscure verbiage to weave a tapestry of information and fantasy, creating a masterpiece of wordcraft that tantalizes the senses and broadens the mind.
The problem is that my tapestry is dull and frayed and such tantalization could be compared to walking into the bathroom after my brother has taken a half-drunken dump.
I’m not a writer.
I’ve always wanted to write. I’ve dreamed about making a living with words, with songs or poems or novels or articles. As a young man, I fantasized about being an investigative journalist who traveled the world, exposing corruption and breaking stories that left people awestruck. I longed to be a music writer, letting my attuned ear pick apart all of the best and worst records for the benefit of music lovers everywhere. I wanted to start a magazine, a blog, a journal, anything that would let me speak my mind in written form to a cacophony of adoring readers.
The problem is, I’m not a writer.
I’ve never written anything worth writing about. I’ve never penned a hit song or drafted a novel or reported a story.
I’m a creative who has never created. I’m a craftsman who’s never crafted.
I’m just a man. A man who lives a very good life. A man who lives a very good, very sad, severely unfulfilled life.
I hate everything I do. That’s the truth. There’s nothing about my life that feels like an accomplishment. With the exception of my wife, I could lose everything tomorrow and not really feel that upset about it.
I have a middle-class, American dream life. And I hate it. I feel trapped in it.
I feel trapped in the comfort, trapped in the routine. I feel trapped in the constant and consistent contentment of predictability and safety. This isn’t what I was made for.
I was made to be better. I was made to be a leader. I was made to follow my own dreams and my own path and my own purpose.
But my dreams are only dreams. My path is circumstantial. My purpose is elusive. And my words are just words.
I am not a writer.
I’m not much of anything else either. I have a degree in a field I’m not qualified to work in. I have a deep well of technology skills that aren’t particularly useful in today’s world. I have nothing marketable, no desirable traits that make me a candidate to do…anything.
There’s nothing in this world that I want more than fulfillment. To feel as though I have found my calling and I am throwing my whole being into following it. To be alive in the knowledge that I am accomplishing my goals and bringing my dreams into fruition. To create for the sake of creation, as well as for financial gain. To create at all, for that matter. To live into my potential and realize what I’m truly capable of. To capture the essence of life in a way that can be shared with and consumed by the public at large. To be free of the rank and file of the corporate world and experience a world outside of paychecks and soul-deadening drudgery. To surround myself with like-minded people who, like me, are striving to be their best. To know strength and health in the last years of my youth. To know the version of myself that’s been kept locked away all these years.
I truly believe writing can be the gateway.
But I’m not a writer.
