I’ve Got Souvenirs But Yesterday Can’t Mean Too Much. Have We Missed An Opportunity?

[Note: This is the fiftieth post of Bible Belt Babylon. Big fucking deal.]

A few weeks ago my Dad sent me a text message asking me, and I’m paraphrasing here but just barely, if I had sent my stuff to blood and thunder. At first I thought he was referencing my Viking heritage (on my Mother’s side), but it turns out he was in fact asking me if I had submitted any entries to the OU Medical School’s literary anthology. I had not.

I felt so... fake. You might not know it from reading these pages of self-revelatory diary-spew, but there was a time I wanted to be a real writer. By “real” I of course mean fiction. Fiction, scripts, stage plays, and poetry all were dirtied by my pen. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow I went from that dream in undergrad to grip work on a children’s movie, three years as a substitute high school teacher with an MBA in non-profitry, and finally a guy who works with computers and may or may not ever have a Master’s in Journalism and Mass Communication. No part or combination of that is a screenwriter, or a novelist, or even a poet. I was so out of touch with my dream that my Dad had to tell me when and where I should be submitting pieces that I, it turns out, had just stopped writing somewhere along the way.

Here’s the funny part, though. Of course, it’s not actually funny, but this is all free so don’t complain. I had taken the day off from work to write my thesis proposal, but spent the lion’s share of my day instead crapping out a 950-word allegory about technology erasing the lines between the plastic and the organic. It was so much more exciting and interesting to me than what I was supposed to be doing. It was a reminder, but not just about writing and my little dream.

“Somewhere along the way,” I had convinced myself that I would never make it as a writer. Consequently, I never tried. Funny thing is (once again funny thing ≠ actually funny) no one ever told me I sucked at writing. No one ever told me I wouldn’t make it. No one ever doubted me, not even the professor that tried to fail me! (True story: he tried to fail me in an independent study class in 2001 where I wrote a remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and as he was explaining why he was failing me he actually said “I still think you’re a great writer and I would love to work with you in the future.”) I’m the only one who ever thought I wouldn’t make it.

I’ve let that kind of thinking infect other areas of my life, and I’ve played safely. I’m tired of doing that. I’m going to swing for the fences for a few innings.

[no more bunting at biblebeltbabylon.blogspot.com, xanga.com/moontos and blog.myspace.com/moontos]