I Cut Myself While Shaving and It Reminded Me of My Writer’s Block
I didn’t mean to graze my cheek and start bleeding, but this is where the downhill journey starts. I’ve always known it. First, I would spend more than twenty hours without blogging about the fragile nature of postmodern capitalism. Then, I would disfigure myself while performing a task as innocuous as shaving. And soon, I will become the knockoff Hemingway no one talks to.
Now, my partner says I tend to go overboard when I haven’t been writing. And I do have an affinity for the hyperbolic. (Let this be a note that I still very much believe the COVID pandemic is Satan’s way of telling us this is our last year as a species.) But other than that, I exaggerate things. For example, it was just yesterday that I was trying to write a think-piece about why people not wearing masks at sports stadiums are endangering the lives of their fellow spectators. This is hyperbolic — those who’re going to sports stadiums in the middle of a pandemic don’t deserve a better fate.
I would love to insert a hyperlink right over here to promote this piece on my blog. But guess what? I can’t, because I never ended up finishing it. I’ve been a hot mess since the pandemic began. I knew I shouldn’t have worn pants on all those Zoom meetings when no one else did. My insecurity comes from the fact that I’m a freelancer. The worst thing which can happen to me isn’t the reception of a stern letter from HR about my junk — it’s earning a bad reputation for my junk. No one wants to work with a person who’s earned disrepute for his penis. Along with, of course, possessing a questionable camera angle on Zoom calls which facilitates this judgement in the first place.
It’s so much easier to fire someone you don’t have on a payroll in the first place. And thus, I went around from one meeting to the next, meeting the requirements of my clients for their websites with questionable web design, and doing the copywriting for those opportunistic leaps of solidarity corporations have a habit of making after every other national tragedy.
Where did I start losing my soul? Probably somewhere around the time it became numb to my morally ambiguous job, and that time I finally dropped my pants during a Zoom call (covertly).
Look at me. I’m a miserable wreck who has a bleeding cheek and a lazy enough posterior to delay the application of that ointment which resides on the upper shelf of the closet.
Oh God, I’ve been a fraud all along, haven’t I? I knew it. I never had it in me. I could never have made it, no matter how hard I tried. It had nothing to do with my pants, or my junk — beyond the latter getting me a fair share of my male privilege. It always had to do with me never being a good enough writer. And the fact that I judge my self-worth based on my incredibly short memory spa —
Wait, I’ve just written this monologue. I won’t be able to sell it anywhere, but these are real words on electronic paper. I’VE WRITTEN AGAIN. Woohoo motherfuckers! Go suck yourselves off! I’m a real writer, and I’m also — OWOWOW. My face is really starting to hurt now. Maybe I should’ve applied the ointment on my injury before going off on an existential rant inspired by it.
Ah well, I’ll take your leave now — I need more time to explore my complicated relationship with pants. Maybe in the form of a think-piece. But more importantly, I’ve gotta get a new blade for my razor. If only my kind was paid well enough to afford one.
Abhijato Sensarma is an eighteen-year-old student from Kolkata, India. He’s on the verge of stepping into the real world — which does not stop him from making fun of it whenever he can. You can reach him on Twitter.
