Humble.B

There is this thing where I like to pretend I am a writer.

Except that I don’t do it ever. I have like fifty journals in a box in my room but those are mostly about ~feeling infinite~ and crying and whatever else I did in junior high in high school and lots of in-depth analysis of this boy who GOT me. Also most of them are moleskine notebooks which is ridiculous because those notebooks are like 13$ and that is a lot of money but the paper is really nice and now I sort of maybe can’t write in other notebooks. 

So I am not a writer but I have a lot of notebooks and I like to pretend I like to write even though most of the time it makes me want to drown myself or stab myself in the neck with a pen or give myself a lot of papercuts with my stupid nice Moleskine paper. It is maybe the worst thing I do in that I derive absolutely no pleasure from the process but I do it anyway because of some obviously fucked up perversion.

And then sometimes this bizarre thing happens where other people maybe think I am a writer, too, because obviously I am a deceiver. I trick them into thinking something that is NOT TRUE. Like how I faked my way through every math class I ever took. Except, this an optional, not-mandatory thing which makes it weirder that I am continually trying to fake my way through it. 

 Also last semester I ended up in a class of people who are REALLY GOOD WRITERS. People who are like, oh, you want us to erotically describe a brick without saying it’s a brick, and then they write something stupid good that is simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious and not ironic even though they are writing EROTICA about a BRICK. And I am too embarrassed to read my thing out loud because it’s real bad. 

But I like to write so most of the time I’m just like fuck you, I’ll write in my journals like an angsty fourteen-year-old and idon’tevencare. Okay, but in this class they decided that it would be an awesome idea to put me in front of a bunch of juvenile delinquents and let me teach them about sonnets and shit. Mostly I just taught them what metaphors and similes were and hoped they wouldn’t try to stab each other with pencils while I was in the classroom. I let them write whatever they wanted, which was pretty uniformly depressing and bizarre but sometimes unintentionally hilarious and they taught me a bunch of youthful slang and things about prison life like how if you are bad you don’t get a pillow. 

Anyway, so I did this and it was awesome and I loved it and it was all life-changey and I wrote a lot about it in my journals and felt super awesome. And I talked about it all the time because it made me feel like a freedom writer. Whatever.

Then the class ended and I had to register for new classes for next semester, and since I am not a writer, just someone who writes even though it is awful I didn’t sign up for any writing classes. I decided on all Cultural and Regional Studies classes, which is what my major is in, even though when I tell people I am a CRS major I feel like a gay kid who really, really wants to believe he is straight. I want to be a CRS major but I am totally gay for writing and that should probably by my major but I’m pretty sure writers only get paid in self-satisfaction and you can’t buy pita bread and 13$ notebooks with self-satisfaction. Also I’m pretty sure if you are actually a writer it doesn’t really matter if that is what your degree is in.

This is irrelevant since I am not actually a writer. 

Anyway so after this class finished I got this email from my professor, who I really, really like, and who is a real writer and is the sort of lady I want to be like when I grow up because she’s totally got that smart, absent-minded professor thing going on. But her email says she noticed I’m not taking any writing classes and that she believes in my talent and that I would be doing myself a disservice to take only CRS classes, and it made me all feel good-y and proud. Because even though I am not a writer, I want to be one even though that is embarrassing to admit.

Anyway, so I emailed her back and it was like blahblahblah I’m honored you believe in me or whatever and then I went back and looked at my classes and what like, uhggg did I really sign up for “The Color Line in US History?” Ughhh. So I decided to drop that and take creative nonfiction, which is the thing I like most, which is another reason I will not ever be a real writer. 

So that is solved but ever since that email I feel like this enormous pressure to be writing things because she believes in me. But I can’t write anything. 

Anything.

Not even my usual long ass, involved journal entries. Now they are like, “I’m pretty sure I have skin cancer. I have an optometrist appointment on Monday. A thirty-three-year-old man hit on me today. I think tomorrow I will buy a self-help book.” 

Whatever. I don’t know what to do. I keep thinking of bad ways to re-tie-in the gay kid metaphor but I am resisting. I just want to be writing but I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO WRITE ABOUT and suddenly now I feel like the pressure is on to be a good writer who does that thing where you write something every day and it is good or will turn in to something good in the future and will not just fester in your google docs forever. Maybe it is because I am pretty content so I don’t have the tortured artist thing happening any more, I dunno. Anyway.

I wrote all this to say I can’t write anything and I am going to spend tomorrow watching Dr. Phil and Oprah and maybe they will inspire me to just LIVE MY LIFE  and I will come out of the closet as wanting to be a writer instead of a CRS major.

Goodnight.