Oh boy. Boy, oh boy. I feel like a slug. I look like a slug. And I acted like a slug the past two days. I feel like Stephen King after he got sober and forgot how to write. His wife sat with him, word by word, until he gained back the ability to type seven hundred suspenseful pages. My creative output is appalling. I’m falling behind and slowly falling into the category of the ordinary. I am making excuses for why I’m so unsuccessful. I have no right to feel so bad for myself and be so lethargic. I feel like I’m just running on a treadmill. I might break a sweat but I’m not getting anywhere. I have nothing to show and I rely on an old lady who is postponing the release date of my second overdue novel. It makes me want to cry that I will be 24 with only one, poorly punctuated, mistake-ridden, expository, stream of conscious, craphole of a book. Spoon in the Road if you are feeling…masochistic. And why is that when I give myself a break, I end up feeling the most like shit. I don’t want days off. They plague me like chemotherapy. It is probably the roll of Oreos I ate today…and the pizza I ate yesterday. Nobody cares. My life is unexceptional and will be forgotten and discarded into the plethora of oversaturated prose and poetry. The moral of the story is that the party ends. We all have to wake up for work on Monday. I try so damn hard to be the most productive, but the truth is, I was a better functioning person while stoned. I wasn’t a better person. I wasn’t happier. I just wrote more. Not as consistently, but at least it was the things I wanted to write about instead of some half-assed perfunctory blog. I have an article I’m supposed to write that is already old news. Not to mention, I wasted this past year on getting clean. I just feel like my life has been a HUGE waste of time. I’m really no better off than I was a year ago. Technically, I’m worse off. I’m a year older and I have accomplished less with my life. I equate success with how much I’ve done. I do a lot, but none of it counts. And NONE of it seems to make a difference. I haven’t changed worth a damn. It isn’t the number of books I’ve read that I will look back at. It will be a combination of what I wrote, and what I did. I fill up my day with forgetful rituals that make me resent the day ahead. The Catch-22 is that when I don’t do them, i.e take a break, I end up feeling worthless, unproductive, and undeserving of any sympathy. I don’t want to be easy on myself. I want life’s hardship to make me a fucking better writer. I want it to fundamentally change how I approach a day. I want to feel something, and breathe beautiful air, gasping for my next breath because if I don’t I will surely die. What do I get instead? Lying in bed because it is too damn hard to sit up. Somedays I’m so happy, I can’t even fall asleep. Today, all I did was try to remember why I dream.
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Ben Bonkoske 