Ben Bonkoske

So many reasons to be happy. The first being food. The second being stinking up the family room with flatulence after indulgent desserts. So, food again. Yesterday was the first time I gave myself the exception to not write for the few people who make me have some semblance that my writing has any meaning. My greatest fault is that I am the only editor of my work. No one has the time. Hell, I barely have the time. I will admit, some of the books I read are not as profound as my chicken scratch. But most of the time, I am embarrassed of my best work. I strive to put pen to paper every night, and on the rare days I don’t, I wake up early enough that I might do it twice in one day. At Breakfast AND Dinner. But between you and I, I rarely eat breakfast. I don’t know how all those spared calories are going to catch up with me when I have to wake up early enough that I’d be hungry to go without them. A bagel might suffice. Regardless, it is never enough. One sentence too short and never meaningful enough to make a difference. I need to do a little more day dreaming to gather some insights that might be worthwhile to write. Carl Jung said there is information and insight. 20 books in one year is a lot of information, but without a joint to spark it, it lays latent without much depth. I just have to remind myself that through abstinence I might arrive at a conclusion unavailable to inebriation. It is a…enduring decision. One of my writer affiliates was my age when he got sober, but after a few years he resorted to some bad behavior. He claims he never got back the spark he had when he was young and sober. I oddly relate. I don’t know if I constitute my life as a firework of passion and inspiration, but the input and output is that of an orgy. John Mulaney got sober (and stayed sober) when he was my age, and he is funny in a quirky way that doesn’t need your approval. He’s like the Zoey Deschanel of dudes. I am going to finish a journal I started at the end of July soon. Since July 25th, of the 125 days have passed, I’d bet I’ve written 125 pages. So I have written a small novella about a chronic masterbater who is afraid of sugar. He fails miserably at not eating chocolate before bed. BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN? TUNE IN FOR THE SEQUEL. It will be titled December 2020 (working title). My old journals took me a good year to finish, but they had so much more digression and character. This most recent scrawl, although filled with poetry, is like a formulaic ancient Chinese water torture. It is just the same sentences written over and over. Maybe I am getting better, but maybe I’m just stagnant. I am reading a biography of one of my favorite authors and by the time he was my age when he wrote that “he had grown up from complaining”, and the next year he wrote probably the greatest masterpiece ever written, A Confederacy of Dunces. It is the only book that has made me laugh out loud. Hemingway takes the fun out of writing, but he turns prose into poetic justice. Thank you all for watching this debacle of English. I look forward to the ending.