My First 500 (Terrible) Words

I’m not sure what this page was supposed to be when I first started paying for a Medium membership, but it never became that. Such as it is, welcome to my very own solemn, neglected crevice of cyberspace. It’s so charmingly pathetic. Oh well, who am I to refuse a blank page? Today I make the same old promise to myself that I have broken so many times before, to put my scribbles somewhere that someone other than myself will read it just to get the ball rolling. I suspect anyone reading this may be hostage to the same compulsion, so judge slowly, friends.

I wonder if I force myself to do this every day, will those familiar sensations of purpose and ambition return? Does that forgotten excitement of destiny approaching lie in wait somewhere between these lettered keys, or have those muscles long since atrophied? God damn that sounded pompous, but I have to keep trying.

How does someone cope with the realization that their life has been spent sprinting in the wrong direction? Never mind the wasted time! That sweet, precious time. What about the money spent on rent to live in the wrong places, spent on school to learn the wrong things? Countless odd-jobs and side-gigs between classes to make ends meet. How many sleepless nights and hurried mornings? All the while savoring the thought of focusing your efforts on something meaningful. Surely I should have found my purpose by now? Oddly enough, none of this would bother me quite so much if I wasn’t such a fucking cliché.

Clichés are the worst. All writers hate cliché. Not only do I suck, but I suck in the same way that other people suck. I suppose it’s a good thing I’m no writer. I never wrote so much as a fortune cookie in the past eleven years. Maybe that grants me a license to be unoriginal and proud, a bona fide millennial mascot. Every dime I ever made I spent on rent and tuition, and it was all for nothing. I have two advanced degrees and I still have to bartend part time just to be broke. Did you know the clickity clack of a laptop keyboard sounds just like the pitter patter of rats in your ceiling? I have no home, no car and no future. I’m out of gas in the middle of nowhere. There’s a gnawing pain in my side. No doubt a stress-induced tumor. It’s possible. WebMD says so, and now it feels like it’s getting worse. Health insurance insurance is for the weak. I’ve drank three pots of coffee so far. Waking up is the hardest part of my day, until I try to fall asleep.

I spent my life waiting for the day that these clothes would fit. It seems they never will. I’ll have to make do with hand-me-downs. You don’t decide who you are, you discover it. Is this suicide or rebirth? Stay tuned.

Five hundred words won’t make you a writer. It may be shit, but at least it’s out there. Tomorrow’s a new day, and the next five hundred words will be better.