Okay, I'm feeling sorry for myself tonight. Why? I'm so glad you asked. For starters, I just looked at my bank balance. I'm completely broke. I work my ass off all year at two, count 'em, two day jobs to make ends meet, and I can't even do that. On top of that, my imaginary career has stalled indefinitely. Yeah, I'm a writer. A screenwriter to be exact. In other words, I'm a loser. Please shoot me.

Don't ask me why I've chosen this as my passion. I don't even know myself. All I know is that I can't help myself. It all started in college. I was a theatre major with an emphasis on acting and getting high. I was good, and I knew I was going to be famous someday. Then one semester, due in no small part to my in-depth research on how to totally fuck up your education, I pulled a 0.2 GPA and, thus, was barred from acting ever again. Well, maybe not ever again, but it sure felt like it at the time. After all, I didn't give a shit about anything else. Acting was my thing. My life. My entire raison d' etre. Yes, I was a pretentious bastard. Stoned and drunk. Not a good combo. Then suddenly, like waking up from a bad hangover, I was barred from doing the only thing I thought I could do well. Or liked, for that matter. So, I did what any self-destructive artist would do, I borrowed my friend's typewriter and two-fingered: FADE IN. The rest, as they say, is a sad history.

Now it's going on 15 years since the first day I hunt and pecked those goddamned words, and I'm still nowhere closer to my dream of never having to get a real job again. Oh sure, I've developed my craft, won some recognition and, heck, even been paid a little for it. But still, I sit here typing these words. A thirty-something ex-Gen-Xer with nothing to show for it. I've truly lived up to the slacker cliché. I've become what conventional wisdom said I would become. And that's the worst part of it all.

Tonight I'm feeling sorry for myself. Please shoot me.