Bitter Elephant

Perhaps I should expand on my last post and introduce the elephant in the room. The large grey pile of under achievement which I keep adding to. I am currently listening to Modern Life is Rubbish, an album along with many others that played throughout my teens. As a fresh young thing listening to this album I was sure that a) I would marry Damon Albarn and b) I would grow up to be a writer of some sort. Neither of these two things have happened. I am being followed around by myself of ten years ago, tugging at my retail uniform and tutting, aggrieved that I have not followed the plans she left for me. As an adult I have finally given my 17 year old self something to rebel against – her future. To say I have even started to grow up would probably be a rather undeserved compliment. I am still habitually in sulks and throw huge embarrassing tantrums when I don’t get my own way. I have come to the point, like many children do with hobbies, where I am thinking of giving up. I have tried writing and im not very good so im throwing a strop and stopping. But the truth is, I haven’t tried. I haven’t even begun to begin trying. All I have written since leaving university is a couple of short stories and some bizarre paragraphs. Diaries I have tried to keep sound self righteous and as excruciating as the journals I kept when I was still at school. I have not tried to write a novel, a poem or an article for a very long time. I am staring at the aforementioned grey elephant waiting for it to evolve enough to write the bloody things for me. As I wallow in inactivity I am surrounded by bright sparkey people, all busying themselves with creativity and ambition. I am deeply envious of these people and in my darkest moments I find myself twisting the respect I feel for them into a tiny digestible nugget of hatred. I ask myself where they get their ideas, their confidence and their passion. To be a writer I always envisaged an insatiable need to write, tearing home in order to get on with the work of being brilliant. I do not have this urge. In fact the thought fillls me with terror, even writing this now I am sweaty of palm not sure if another sentence will be following this one. But I THINK about writing and being a writer almost all the time, its just nothing….ever…..happens. I torment myself with thoughts of “if I was just a bit more confident, if I just had more chutzpah, more to say – there would be no issue”. But, alas, I cannot change who I am and so I either throw my writing tools down amongst all the other things I have given up on (dance, music, dress making, cooking etc etc) and become a bitter old wench, or I just try to write something, anything down. So this is what I plan on doing. I might not make any money, or appear on any shelves but at least when im all crinkly I will know I had tried. As for Damon, I have found someone a hundreds times better, so maybe I am capable of meeting and even surpassing my ambitions afterall.