Please, shoot me!
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.
posted by The Pauper @ 12:44 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I know how you feel. I quit my teaching job in 2000 to become a full time fiber artist. I am getting recognition slowly...but I need the cash!! No one is buying art, or my art. I have to justify my prices and explain my artwork to everyone. "No, it isn't a pot holder or quilt." I need a gallery/art rep. that believes in me to help get my work out there, instead of hanging on a wall. Not to mention the 50% commission they are getting for not marketing my work.(I do all my marketing, but try and balance that with doing art and it is a 24/7 day job.) I am fed up, but I had a light buld moment today. "It isn't that Life sucks, it is the moments like these in Life that suck." :)
Hope you get that big break soon.
SuSan
I know how you both feel. I have a little problem most people call "STRESS". I have quit every job I have had except the two I was fired from. Any negitive remark towards me from anyone and I will snap at them ten times harder. There are too many times I have said all I need is a gun and one bullet so I can end it all. I am 40 years old and I have probably had 40 jobs, I lost track on the count to be honest, but for some reason I keep going on. I think it's because of my wife. I guess I have a hard time thinking she will be okay if I was not here. well anyways good luck to all of us who are having a ruff time in life, and keep striving for the good times,Ken
Damn it. I can relate to this story and the comments. 51 years old an no closer to realizing my career potential or non potential. No to late to switch gars but 30 years in the film profession has really taken its toll. A business I hate and love.
Fuck you film biz and shoot me now.
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