This is when I will write the great American novel. Right now. This is where suddenly everything will unlock and all of the half-hearted and -assed efforts I have previously committed to paper will become worth it, and beautiful, as mile markers on this journey to Real Writing.
This will certainly not be another throw away writing "exercise", the thing I do when I want to write more than anything and instead write nothing. This will not be another night that I question why I wanted to write at all, and remember the Bukowski poem saying that if it doesn't come shooting out of me, not to do it.
This will not be another night when I think, if I didn't have the Idea of writing to give my life meaning, if I was perhaps honest with myself, and let go of this thing I say I want to do and yet never do, then what do I have? What will I be? Will I just be that guy? With a job? Who wanders around, thinking he matters, and yet instead offers nothing?
I will not then realize that I am already that guy. I will not realize that I offer nothing. That saying I want to create is not the same as creating, and it is not the same as doing a thing, leaving a thing to be found. Thinking it is not enough, is never enough. And so many people get so much farther without even thinking. Because they do. And, because they Do.
This is not the time that I look deep into myself and find nothing.
This is not the night when I realize I have never,really worked for anything, and that I hate the idea that I ever should have to. And also hate that I never learned how to work, or was never forced to learn, or expected to work. And hate the world for not being enough of a challenge that demanded my best effort. And realize that the world is in fact that challenging and that my world could be so much better if, indeed I had worked. That this life is cold and empty precisely because I have never worked for anything, or achieved anything that brings meaning and peace.
And I will not recall the things people have praised me for, that were actually shit and drivel and how could they not see it? I will not question the people that surround me remind me of victories that were really the lowest common denominator. I will not fear that I am just as stupid as them.
And I will not weigh the equally awful alternatives that either I am too lazy to do anything great or I am actually incapable of doing great things.
I will not softly sigh and resign myself to a life of bitterness and judgement of people who are happy and who are accomplished. I will not hate them for finding the secret that there is no secret, that you just do it. I will not lament all the opportunities I missed that are so obvious now. I will not secretly hate my idols for being worthy of idolization.
I will not fear that I have lived more empty years already than the number of potentially better years I have ahead of me. I will not imagine dying before I do anything. I will not feel the pain of imaging how it will feel when it really is too late, when I am really out of time to do things, to create. I will not wonder if my future-self will hate this present-self more than this present-self hates this present-self.
I will not do any of those things. Tonight will be different.