Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 225

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I got a spam comment on a Coffee Log from a couple days ago inviting me to click a link for an online gambling site. The fact that this algorithm caught me from the sea of thousands upon thousands of wordpress blogs is a little flattering. I’ve got the eyes of internet scammers. I’m worth being fished.

Does this mean I’ve made it?

In all seriousness, though, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to define my own success. When I was a kid, I used to say I’d only be satisfied if I won a Nobel Prize. Okay, let’s be honest, I was saying that as late as a few years ago. But things have changed. I had a lot of setbacks on the path I’d set for myself as a writer. And, even more damning, I’ve had a lot of successes in things that have nothing to do with writing.

No-one really knows what they’re looking for. The prize lacks luster when you find it. And one trip’s end just begins another. Etc, etc. I’m on the brink of 30. That’s not old in the whole of human population, but it looks like a milestone to me. One clear feeling has crept out of the space between the big ‘3’ and ‘0’, and that’s a sense of dis-belonging – or, to put it another way, that life isn’t so much about being recognized as about recognizing yourself. With or without a Nobel, 99% of your time is spent with yourself.

So I’m trying to write for me. Turns out, that’s more challenging than imagining my best-selling audience right around the corner. Sitting down to type something is no different than being alone, and being alone can be both brutally honest and miserly un-forthcoming. You’re not a question. There’s no answer to yourself. You’ll get up tomorrow and things will change or they won’t. Maybe you’ll be the one to change them. But none of that comes home with you. You only go to sleep with dreams of wildflowers, mixed magic, spidersilk.

Frankly, I’m exhausted. I hardly ever do anything, but I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about how to do it. If I hadn’t given my word to a faceless health insurer to lay off smoking for $30 a month, I’d light something right now. But your word’s important, and you’ve got to stick to it, even when you’d rather be burning up.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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Yes, I know what you mean about writing and writers. We seem to have lost the target. Writers seem to write to be known as writers. They don’t write because something is driving them toward the edge.

Charles Bukowski, On Writing