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2003-10-07 Irritability I'm feeling particularly irritable right now - it's probably due to this nagging feeling that I'm coming down with the cold that's making its rounds (aching muscles, unexplained exhaustion, slight congestion). But the thoughts I started having at supper tonight have been coming and going for some time now. Basically, my beef is this: sometimes I just don't feel like my writing is taken seriously by certain people. Like my parents. My father rarely mentions it anyway, and since he doesn't seem to care about much of anything, he probably doesn't give much thought to it. The shocker is my mother. She and I have always been pretty close, and I used to always feel like she supported me. Most of the time she doesn't say anything when I mention my dream of becoming a published, full-time writer, but when she is feeling irritable, she says things like "Oh, yeah, right," in that It's-Never-Gonna-Happen tone. Maybe it's because she used to have certain dreams and aspirations that never came true for her, but I have enough doubt about whether I'll ever become a writer as it is, thanks. Tonight we had supper a little late, and since she had to make her nightly call to her friend, she said that if I wanted to wait to do the dishes, she'd help me. I told her no, I wanted to do them right away whether I had to wash and dry them myself, because I wanted to work on my book (which, theoretically, i should be doing now, but hey, I need to vent). And she just gave me this look. Like it's not really that important. It's not like a paying job or school or anything like that. It's a hobby, which means it's something I should do only when there's nothing else to occupy my time. Maybe this book I'm working on now will never make me money. Maybe no book I ever write will make me money. But I'll never know unless I try. The other day, Erica mentioned her friend who's a poet. He works 4 hours a day at a crap job and then goes home and WORKS on his writing. And when he's working on that, his passion, he does not want to be disturbed. Because he takes it seriously, and he expects those around him, his friends, his family, to take it seriously too. I want that. There are a few people who ask me from time to time how my book is doing - Erica, Andrea, sometimes Natalie. But those are the regulars. Mostly everyone else either never thinks about it, and I guess that's fine. But sometimes it just feels like they think it's this unattainable dream that I should maybe give up on but they don't want to say so because anyone who knows me knows I'll blow up in their faces. See, this is what will be nice if I'm able to get an apartment on my own. It'll be MY schedule and no one else's. I won't have to get up and go do something for someone else, interrupting the flow of my work. Maybe people don't realize how disruptive it is to start and stop and start again. You end up feeling like you accomplished nothing all day, even if you did. Anyway. The rant endeth here. I will now go work on my book, and hopefully no one will ask me to do anything for them for the next hour or so. |
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