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...I've decided to say "The hell with it all." and post an introduction.
"What brings him here?", you might ask. A question with many and varied answers, and one which brings me to my agony. I honestly don't know.
At one time, I would have considered myself a writer. Some of my earliest memories are of writing. Ghost stories, tales of demons and witches and were-beasts, countless hours wiled away in school when I should have been paying attention to my teachers when instead I was thrust into my own world of fantasy - a world which I found much preferable to the one in which I lived my life. I'm a single child of divorced parents, parents so country that we didn't even have an internet connection until 2k1. And that connection was through a measly 9600k modem. I still fondly remember the old America Online connection sounds. I'd stay up hours at night, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I sat hypnotized in front of the computer screen; the world's knowledge at my fingertips and for the first time, an audience for my writing. Interactive writing, even! Forum roleplay became my life and helped me find a better place than the cruel reality of the awkwardness of teenage years.
Time passed, and things faded, as they always do. I grew older, my online "RP buddies" and I grew apart. I was drawn into the world of music, and I took to it like a duck to water. Metal became my life. I started a band, we toured (locally, of course) and I lived a portion of the rock star's existence.
Emptiness. Drugs and alcohol and sex and excess all in an attempt to fill in vain some hole inside me that has existed since my youth.
My first grade teacher once told my parents, "One day, he'll be on Letterman. A comedian or author or actor. I can just see it." I still remember the beaming smile on my mother's face when she first told me that story. The barest glimmer of it remains in her eyes when I ask her to remind me of it, these days. Holding onto that hope. It's human nature.
Twenty-odd years later, I am... nothing. Nothing but the sum of failed expectations and a life lived empty. Where once I wrote every day, now I write sporadically at best. I've not written down a single coherent thought in well over a year. Not a journal entry or poem or work of fiction in at least three.
So, I've come here. My life, at its best, is misery. Great expectations unfulfilled. I know I can do it. I simply... don't. And I don't know why.
Motivation. Inspiration. Discipline.
I have none of them.
Not that I lack for ideas. On the contrary, my brain is a constant torrent of the whimsical and fantastical. As I tell my wife, I drink to shut the voice off. The voice inside that doesn't stop or slow or stutter. Even now, I hear it asking me, "Why?"
I suppose I'm here for an answer. To learn from others. To seek input. And maybe... just maybe... get off my ass and write something again. I don't think that would be too much to hope for.
Thanks for giving me a place to vent. And if you've read this meandering diatribe, thank you for allowing me to vent in this virtual space. It's not often that I get to really say what I think.
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