The Coward's Guide to Self Fulfillment
I don't pretend to know everything. In fact, I'm very unsure about a lot of things; I have lived my whole life in the vague, grey areas (and most recently, moved to a physically grey area). When my wife and I have conversations about spirituality, politics, or any damn thing in life, I'm comfortable with a lack of definitiveness. I do, on occasion, impress my wife with a vast knowledge of absolutely useless factoids completely unrelated to what I do or what I've studied in school, a result of a lifetime spent reading whatever is nearest to the toilet I happen to be sitting on at any particular moment.
There is one thing that I believe with every fiber of my being and that is that men, by and large, are extraordinary cowards. Sure, many men are prone to ignore their own personal safety to, say, run into a burning building to rescue someone or jump in front of a car to protect a child. Those kinds of actions are very brave, but I'm not talking about that kind of cowardice-I'm talking about the cowardice Thoreau meant when he wrote that "most men lead lives of quiet desperation." I feel like the prevalence of masculinity culture prevents us from truly speaking and acting our truths. We shrink when it comes to emotional vulnerability, shut our eyes to the bright light of brutal honesty, each day ceding ground to what should be our true selves. Somehow, some way, we learn to cloister our feelings and swallow our tongues, lest we be "found out". This sort of thing builds and builds until it bursts through, usually in the form violence, self-harm, or mental anguish, amongst many other things. We internalize these things resulting in even our closest relationships becoming far more superficial than we are even aware of and its one thing I am very much guilty of.
Like any good Catholic boy, I am absolutely riddled with guilt. Embarrassment. Frightened to reveal my true self and my honest thoughts and emotions to others, lest I be revealed as the absolute monster I think I am. It's what has led to my lifelong battle with self esteem and self image because I don't see my "good" qualities but I can damn sure feel all of my negative ones. Every. Single. One. In spite of this, I've been pretty successful in terms of finding a job that is fulfilling and being in a healthy marriage and yet, the coward still lives within me.
I've written about being afraid to call myself a "writer" because, in all honesty, putting yourself out there is absolutely fucking terrifying. Sure, I've written a graduate thesis and dissertation, presented at conferences using drafts of articles that were never accepted for publication. I teach writing fucks' sake, but I've always compared myself to people who have the bonafides: people who went through the Iowa Writer's Workshop or studied in MFA programs. Meanwhile, I worked as a supremely shitty journalist at a weekly newspaper before embarking on a career in Rhetoric and Composition. The writing I was good at and most experienced with was always practical but very rarely enjoyable, the coward envious of those who threw themselves into fiction, poetry, prose, and non-fiction. But the one good thing about this pandemic, this move to this expensive fucking city, this shift in my career, has been that the coward is tired. He no longer has the strength to put up this façade of aloofness or disinterest in writing what is enjoyable, of wanting to write and present it to the world.
I turn 40 in a couple of weeks. I love my job and love my live, flaws and all, but I can't let the coward dictate the rest of what, in the cosmic scheme of things, will be a very short life. So I want to reveal something to you all as a way of not only trying to finally kill off that fucking coward but to hold myself accountable...
I've been writing for the past few months. Fiction. I'm aiming to write a novel and setting a minimum bar of 2500 words a week (hopefully exceeding that). I don't want to quite reveal what it's about because it's still precious to me but I must admit that I've absolutely loved writing. I want to bring people into a semi-fantastical world that I'm building with my internet-riddled clown brain. I'm in no way promising great works of literature, I just want to have fun and hopefully bring y'all along for the ride. My lovely wife has been a huge supporter of this and has helped immensely with ideas, thoughts, suggestions, etc.
To be clear, this blog entry isn't meant to be arrogant or hubristic-quite the opposite actually. I'm being earnest, sincere and honest in all of this. I know it's going to be a long process, but hopefully I can bring you all along with me in between the socialist propaganda and dick jokes I normally post here. I'm lucky to know a few of you who have published in the public/fiction/non-fiction world, so I hope you won't mind if I solicit you for advice. For everyone else, I'm just thankful you all continue to read the horseshit that this blog is made of. All I ask is that y'all continue to read, share, and comment on the blog. I greatly appreciate the morale boost.
To be continued...