TED Talk

What’s the destination? For that matter, what’s the starting point? I honestly can’t tell you anymore. I guess when we want to get better at something, it’s usually because we either want to make money from it, or we have a child-like draw to it. Writing has always been an interest of mine. All the way back to when I used to write Silent Hill fan fictions in my room late at night. Wish I still had those, but they’re gone forever.

I remember showing my friends some of the things I wrote and being teased about them. I don’t think it came from a bad place, but more of I suppose boys being boys. It didn’t feel good. I remember talking about wanting to be an author when I grow up, talking about maybe going to school for it. I remember my mother telling me that it was unrealistic; to find something that can actually earn money. That didn’t feel good either, but it left a lasting impression. Lasting enough to forget about it entirely for years.

Coming back to it now, I wont lie and say that it wasn’t motivated by the concept of earning what we in the industry might call “A boatload of cash.” But I quickly learned how foolish that is. Not really from an artistic perspective, but more practically, I suppose. Everyone needs to make money, and if you make yours off of writing trash articles for magazine, then who am I to judge.

I found out eventually how unlikely making money off of this was. It didn’t feel good, and for a bit I contemplated giving it up all over again. I thought about how if I couldn’t make money off it, then maybe everyone was right, maybe it was a waste of time. Then I thought about how good it felt to write those shitty fanfictions against the somber light of my bedside table. I remember how full of pride I felt after every page. And yeah, they were terrible, but that feeling wasn’t. Back then, I never thought of making money. The concept of being paid to write never crossed my young mind. So, I ask you, why should it now?

Yeah, if I make some money off of the innate ramblings that filter through my fingers. I’ll never turn down a check (for any prospective partners out there) but if nothing comes from it, then so be it. I really wish I finished that fan fiction back then, and perhaps I never will. But I’ll never feel that way again. The twinge of regret that still lives rent free in my belly of what I could have accomplished if I never gave it up all those years ago. How much better I could be by now. The work I could have accomplished. I’ll never get that time back, so when I see other people try to give up before they start, that feeling pulses like a tumor.

I suppose the moral of this TED Talk is just…don’t think about it too hard. If some part of you likes to do something, then just take a fuckin’ chill pill and do it. The second we start relegating our deepest desires to flow charts of efficiency is the day that we lose everything. There’s enough shit to stress about in life, writing shouldn’t be one of them. (Or drawing or making glass sculptures of flamingos. Whatever.)