Do what you love

The Oatmeal posted this comic somewhat recently about ... I'm not going to tell you. I want you to read it!

Done?

Okay. Yes, it is a little tl;dr. I do think there is a lot of truth in it though. Actually, I think it is all true. Everything he says in the comic I have felt at sometime if not all the time. I don't just mean for the blog, because honestly we know I don't blog enough for it to really count (yet). I mean for my writing in general. Someday's I can lock myself in my room and get nothing done, someday's I can go for a walk in a new neighborhood and still nothing. I can sit at a coffee shop, a bus stop, a drug den... and still nothing! It is these weird moments of clarity when I realize what I should be writing.

Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't. I have written pages of complete and utter shit just to get one paragraph out of it in the end. And it's worth trudging through that crap to get a gem.

I think the part I like the most is asking for help on what to write. Someone could tell me they think I should write about a trip going to grandma's and I end up writing about a fifty-year-old suffering with a fear of Jell-o. I love the baffled looks I get when someone reads a story they know started from something else. The bounds of imagination are much looser than you'd think.

(Homework - give me a prompt or sentence on what to write about. Maybe I'll post what I can come up with!)

No, I'm not a "writer". I don't get paid for it - I'm not even well known. But perhaps one day I will be. That is really all the matters to me - the 'maybe'. 

Related/Unrelated - 

My teacher read us a poem in class the other day that I have been meaning to show you guys. 

Failing and Flying

By Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph. Remember to always do what you love - even if you're bad at it. You can always get better.