What is this new clusterfuckery?

I have tremendous admiration for writers with focus and drive. Also hatred so deep and black that light cannot escape it a certain amount of jealousy. Sometimes I read of writers who have disciplined six-hour writing schedules, neatly bracketed by an hour of promotional work and an hour of research with a nice bit of lunch in the middle and tea at two. Then I discover that they can do this because they don't have to work, or are institutionalized, or have some other circumstantial support that I currently lack. Once, when I was young ♫♫ and my heart was an open book ♫♫, I labored under the illusion that Someday I Would Be [insert well-paid full-time writer here]. It was difficult to avoid the thought: If I didn't have to bake my scalp under the queer vibrations of fluorescent lighting for 40 hours a week I might get more done, too.

Since then I've learned more about the business of writing, and about myself. About the former? Nobody's born [insert "well-paid full-time writer" here]. At some point they're working day jobs or are unemployed in the trailer without next month's rent in the bank and have to type on both sides of the paper. They all had at least two simultaneous jobs: the one that provided a paycheck, and the writing.

And about myself? Well then.

I think there are times in everyone's life where they look around their corner of the world and  experience the supreme dissatisfaction of unfulfilled ambition. Some people are perpetually dissatisfied, and this expresses itself in perpetual ambition and drive. Some people are only dissatisfied at one particular point, which results in torrid affairs in Vegas the purchase of inappropriate sports cars. Then there are people who are perpetually dissatisfied and experience it as a sort of high-tension-wire hum throughout their days, but don't do terribly much about it. Sometimes such people end up in Vegas in convertibles that look like large bars of red soap, because the hum has arced into a burning fire that couldn't be ignored. Other times, they don't do anything. They just amble along, never quite understanding what's wrong, or ever fully realizing why they drink a bit too much, or have too few people in their lives who actually understand them. It's a zombie sort of existence, without enough moxie to go out and get brains.

The only thing worse than a demotivated zombie is a demotivated zombie who blames other people or circumstances for his lack of tasty brains. They're all, Oh, but I have to hold down a job, or I would have, but my leg has gone gangrenous and fallen off or I don't really care for brains all that much anyway. But all that's a lie. They love brains. Crave them. That fat trumpet-player zombie from the 9th Ward has no legs, one arm, and is missing his lower jaw, and he's gotten so many brains they're caked all over the front of what's left of his tuxedo shirt. And a job? Well. Rough living death, pal. You could always be a homeless zombie, couldn't you? Or is that too much like work?

There's a certain amount of comparing-oneself-to-others in all of that, which isn't particularly helpful. One sleepless morning last week I finished Rabbit, Run with more than a tinge of despair. The easy facility with which Updike portrayed the inner emotional lives of his characters seemed to me to be incomparable. I'll never be able to do that, I thought. Never. I just don't know enough about human nature, and it's too late to learn. That lasted for twenty minutes or so. Then, I had the fine thought which stopped all that dead and flushed it away: "Portraying the inner emotional lives" in that way is Updike's bag, not yours. What's your bag? Then I spent another twenty minutes or so thinking about all the things that I do well that have nothing to do with John Updike whatsoever. By the time I had to get up and go to work and pretend that I'd had enough sleep, I felt fine. Better than fine, actually: I felt competent and motivated.

Our situations, like our talents and strengths, are just that: ours. The fact that  [insert "well-paid full-time writer" here] is able to get up at 5AM, write until noon, have lunch, write until two, then knock off for an afternoon of daiquiris and dog racing is just fine...for [insert "well-paid full-time writer" here]. That's his schedule, those are his circumstances and abilities. Me, I've got the full-time job, I'm in a caretaker situation with an ailing parent, and I often have the focus and attention span of a cocaine-addled gibbon. This past week there were half a dozen things that went awry, any one of which would have disrupted anyone's schedule. But that's my schedule, these are my circumstances, and they are accompanied by my talents. More importantly, I set my goals and stoke my ambition, no one else. I don't want to be like John Updike, not just because I can't, but because it doesn't make any sense to appropriate someone else's goals.

Now then. I had plans this afternoon, but the toilet has exploded, so I'm going to go do something about that.

Here! Enjoy some Zappa. There's a verse about a toilet in it.