Life Can Be A Success Story.

"yes I said yes I will Yes"
-the final lines of James Joyce's Ulysses​

I acknowledge and am aware of the fact that all of the self-improvement and the journey I have set out on while writing this novel is a massive cope. (What's the deal with that? Is it performance art? What do all these radical changes have to do with writing a fiction book? Good art should be transformative. If I want to write a book with the aspiration of changing readers' lives, I have to let the book change my own life. The book is my life now.) Behind all the accomplishments is tremendous sadness and fear. Tonight has been one of those nights in which the doubt and reality has sunken in. I appreciate nights like tonight. The most hopeless nights are the most important. Doing your best while feeling your lowest is to walk in faith. I'm thankful for the doubt and fears of the future, now. They remind me of what's at stake if I make the wrong choices in life. If I sit back and wait for everything I've ever wanted to fall into my lap, my worst nightmares will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in many ways, I'm already living out my own personal Hell, so, my misfortune has blessed me with newfound fearlessness. 

Every step towards an uncertain future hurts. I have to make peace with the pain. My trauma is a part of me. I accept my rejection. I'm thankful for my losses. I can collaborate with my struggle. It is a part of my story and I need to own it. You shouldn't be resentful toward challenges. Life has given me no choice but to strive for greatness. I'll either be a complete success or a total failure. I can't afford to settle. Mediocrity was never an option. I can make an origin story out of my regretful past. I need to look at existence with all the baggage and difficulties and still say yes to life, enthusiastically. Not only that but I need to be thankful for all the trouble because it will make me stronger. 2023 was resistance training.* I can be a better provider for those in my life who is more patient, more generous, more understanding, more kind. I can make sure I never make anyone else ever feel like I had to in order to get here. 

I know all this seems wholly self-involved and narcissistic but I'm not doing it for me. I don't want to live for myself. I want to enrich the lives of others. I wasn't put on Earth to age alone in my bedroom. I owe the world the best version of myself. I need to show the people who stuck around through my rough patch this year that I was worth the investment. The people in my life deserve the best of me, not excuses. I hope this motivates other people, to see me publicly eat dirt all year and then pick myself back up from it. I'm not special. 

​The world deserves the book that I'm writing. I had been slowly whittling away at it the last five years when I had a Field of Dreams moment. God, or fate, my ego (whichever you prefer) was, like, "You haved to write this book. You need t make these changes in order to get what you want out of life." And I thought, "OK." 

*I wrote this line that doesn't fit the vibe of this post but I'm too indulgent not to include it somewhere: Fourth quarter of the year and I'm trying to score. (That's a three-way pun. That was a normal pun. Hit 'em with a right hook, then an uppercut.)