I once heard an award winning science fiction writer say, that a good writer will piss off a lot of people, but a great writer will piss off everyone alienating themselves from their family and friends.
I have no friends. Barely anyone in my family talks to me anymore because they have all learned by now that everything is copy. Everything ends up in my stories/on video, and in the last few years, online in my blogs.
I've talked about my health, my money situations, my love life, my desires, and the people who are around me.
Some people thought it was fabulous, giving them their 15 minutes of fame in their minds, others just ended up breaking all ties with me.
I turn 40 next week. My dreams of becoming a published author have long since fallen flat. In high school and college, I had a few poems published in newspapers and independent magazines. None of which are still around. In the years since, it's been nothing but rejection letters, broken promises from shifty agents/editors/so called publishing houses, and a mountain of debt for a self publishing group that ended up being nothing more then red tape.
That dream is dead. The few crumbs of blog posts I do now are all anyone will get to read of my work for now.
I will still write, just for myself. I write because I need to write. I enjoy writing, I get a high off it. Cliched, cliched, cliched. But true. No one might ever get to read my manuscripts but me and the few relatives that still talk to me, but I'm a writer. I'm not an author. And the only difference between a writer and an author is a paycheck.
40 next week. I always pictured myself with seven or eight published novels by now, doing weekly/monthly magazine columns as a day job, balancing it with being a horror hostess, married to a really great guy living in Toronto or Montreal. The dream/goal/expectation was when I got to this age, moving to a small coastal fishing community, opening up a studio where we'd work together creating art/films/music, and run a small coffee house as a day job.
Where did my dreams fall apart? None of it happened, none of it looks like it will ever happen. But we all have dreams, things so deep within us that we can't get over the idea that they will never happen.
When is it time to just let go of the dreams and when do you continue to believe in them?
The only dream I have left, and that's slipping away at warp speed, is to find that great guy. Love. The one dream no one ever wants to let go of finding. Even when the odds are stacked so high against you, you can't even see your own shadow in the sunlight, it's the one dream people seem to hang on to for dear life.
Cause that's what it is isn't it? Dear life. The one thing that makes life worth it.
I don't know if I'll ever be the woman everyone seems to think I should be? A no-nonsense firmly based in reality pay the bills and shut up type. That's not me. It's never been me. I'm a lets get dressed up for a Rocky Horror Picture Show party in the middle of the day, learn the dance moves to Backstreet Boys' 'Backstreet's Back' video, embrace your inner geek and wear it on your sleeve fan-girl.
How can I turn 40 when I don't feel 40? I still feel like I'm that 19 year old kid who had this purse full of notes and ideas mixed in with her favourite Sepultura tapes. When did growing up mean giving up?
So as I sit here this morning, thinking about this horrifying number that is suppose to magically make me into someone respectable, I just can't help but wonder...
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