On being realistic
Claire de Lune plays quietly on the CD player in my room, at work. This particular rendition is evocative and plaintive. The fingers and strains seem to reach into the limitless and search for a lost lover. Even the soaring, triumphant bars hold the tension of something lost. Its darkness holds me a willing captive in my low lit workspace. My hands dance over a body and my mind gets to wander. Unless the face attached to the body is talking to me. Bastards.
I prefer the quiet, with me and DeBussy creating things in my head. I live in that head, you know. It is at once a fantastic and terrifying place. It is, at once home and foreign mission. But it is mine, in all of its twisted bramble. It is mine.
It is in this place that I do most of my writing. It is in this place that I watch my potential leach away. Potential. That surreptitious thing of which I always fall short. I wonder if my potential runs with the keening cicadas or the wild things that keep communion with each other in the dusty landscape of this desert. I wonder if it hides in a bamboo chest, folded inbetween layers of fine, exotic silk and fragrant incense from far away temples. I wonder, because my potential is fickle. It allows me to get excited about this and that then hollows out when the realization hits me.
I know what I want to do and anything less is just paying the bills.
Potential is kind of a bitch.
Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. Or a singer, or a surgeon, or a fighter pilot. Or a writer.
Or a writer.
I watch as I allow one more dream to skitter away, like sand crabs back into the ocean. I fear I might have to be ok, with not being an astronaut.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
You are a writer … an astronaut …well, perhaps not. But a writer? Definitely! Potential is fickle, as is our perception of it … perhaps only one of these two variables is actually changing? xxJ
April 28th, 2009 at 3:27 am
You are young, with so much left to do. I know it feels like you’ve been going around the sun for a million years, but really, you’re young. You’ll do it.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:00 am
the thing is, you are a writer with an amazing voice and stories to tell. it’s just the paying bills thing that’s gotten in the way. For. Now.
you are a young lady and once the work thing stabilizes i know that your potential will be your ally.
love you. xo
April 28th, 2009 at 4:28 am
What words of wisdom can I add that de & kiki haven’t already said? Just keep doing it, because you love it – money may or may not come of it, but you love it and so keep letting your stories flow.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:44 am
you are a writer. you always have been, babe. xoxo
April 28th, 2009 at 5:04 am
you’ll always be a writer, and i’ll keep reading you as long as i can. so there.
nya, nya nya…
April 28th, 2009 at 5:15 am
You are a writer. Period.
Being what we are is one thing, achieving the level of success is another. I doubt I’ll ever achieve success in my labour of love, but I can’t abandon it. It is what I am. Even without success, it makes it easier to be me.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:17 am
You fall short… where?!!!
You’re a great, great writer.
Duh.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:24 am
I do so know what you mean. I’ve been the only income for a family of 6, 5, 4, and now 3 as the kiddos have grown and left home. My dreams that lay dormant for years are only freshly awakened. Sometimes the hunger of those dreams gnaws at me, making me anxious and unhappy. Then I remind myself that it is okay. I’m okay with some day being an inspiration to others who say, “Wow! Did you know Fran didn’t get published until she was (ancient) years old? Never give up on a dream!”
You’re way ahead of me, and you’re younger. You are an inspiration to myself and others. You are a writer. I am a writer. Our books haven’t come out yet. They are “in progress.”
Meanwhile, I’m still celebrating that you’re not in retail sales!
April 28th, 2009 at 6:25 am
ok. that is exactly how i feel. i get to the end of every day and feel like all i did was watch my potential wither up and float away.
pretty sure i am not spelling wither right.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:42 am
I’ll be a doctor and you’ll be a writer, deal?
April 28th, 2009 at 6:43 am
You are the gifted kind of writer with a crystal clear voice who can write of pain and anguish as fluidly as you do happiness and joy. You may not see it, but others most certainly do.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:10 am
You don’t want to be an astronaut, and you ARE a writer.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:42 am
You already are a writer woman. You want to be a published writer, that’s harder.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:45 am
It’s not skittering away. It’s not.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I hear what you are saying and I’ve contemplated some of those things: If this is all I ever be, am I ok with it. I think it is good to think about and make peace with…
But the eternal optimist in me points to others that wrote later in life – unlike many other dreamy callings, writing doesn’t have to happen in youth and probably gets better in time – and I say hold on.
Maybe finding peace with where we are today and holding out for tomorrow – being published – is healthy and right.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:33 am
you ARE a writer, my dear.
a paycheck is not the determining factor.
(i didn’t miss your point, though. and i definitely feel the same. but not paying the bills by your art does not mean you are not an artist.)
April 28th, 2009 at 9:04 am
You can be whatever you want…you probably have many things to tackle, having mastered the “writer” portion.
You are a writer, Flutter, and a fucking good one.
Don’t forget that or I’ll come smack you with my good arm.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:34 am
how can you write stuff like this and not be a writer? someone said something… about something… you have to face a lot of rejection before getting published. like… a LOT. i don’t know if i have the skin for it. i haven’t even tried, though. in my head when i grow up, i’m a writer. words flowing from my fingers like rain.
you are a writer.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:47 am
You are so NOT average. Me? I’m resigned to always occupying the d-list, but I still have trouble with not being a superstar.
You you you ARE a superstar.
April 28th, 2009 at 10:23 am
wow, you are more than ok and also much more than an astronaut, you need some more courage bits, your work is phenomenal, perhaps you can research creative writing grants to begin a course of action?
April 28th, 2009 at 11:41 am
If anyone has earned their astronaut wings, it’s you. Fly, baby. Fly.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
This is where I would make a joke about navigating uranus. But that would be poor taste, wouldn’t it?
April 28th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
This place here is an amazing fulfillment of potential. Don’t denigrate what your words have done for hundreds of readers.
Oh, and I’ve decided you’re the human “Clair de Lune”–speaking of evocative and plaintive.
April 28th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
the struggle is part of the journey. it will rip apart everything you know and align you into who you are meant to be. if you listen, if you pay very close attention, you will begin to see the shaping of events not as keeping you down, but as changing your direction. a writer is a writer. and a writer will spill words to paper b/c they must.
i am not trying to be poetic. this has been my life. the power of determination is strong.
keep moving forward. do not think about fear, simply DO.
i read this today. and i read your words and this resonates with them:
“whatever situations disturb us today are also guaranteed to offer unexpected growth”
April 28th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I echo several of the comments here. You already are a writer. What I assume you mean is a PAID writer. And that is a world, a struggle, I am very familiar with. Feel free to email me sometime.
April 28th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
yeah, know this all too well. i’ve got potential but can’t get paying gigs because i don’t know how to chase them.
April 28th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Potential…I wrestle with that word and ALL that it means too.
You’re a writer.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
You ARE a writer. You are.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Astronauts suck and they’re not even very good at that ’cause they’re all floaty around in space and it’s hard to wrap your mouth around anything when you’ve a big space bubble on your head.
You, my dear, ARE a writer. The books and all that will simply follow. I believe.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Um. You are a writer.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
An astronaut…????? Good heavens! No, thank you!!!!! I’ll keep my feet on the ground with you, My Lady…
April 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
you ARE a writer my love. keep writing. even if it doesn’t pay the bills (and i believe that someday it will)
April 28th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Please don’t lose heart, I need your voice.
April 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Saying you’re not a writer is like saying you’re not a breather, a woman or a maker of friends. It just isn’t.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:58 am
who wants to be an astronaut when you can be a kick-ass writer like you???
April 29th, 2009 at 7:14 am
all right, i know everyone else is already saying it, but i’ll say it too: you ARE a writer. in fact, you’re more of a writer than a lot of other people who actually make money writing. i’m a teacher. i’ll always be a teacher, whether or not i’m in a profession making money (however little) by teaching. you stitch words together so smoothly that, before i know it, i’m staring at a living, breathing tapestry of words, and the fact that no one pays you for it doesn’t make it any less beautiful or real. i hope you can remember that today.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:15 am
oh, and also? astronauts have to pee in their suits. who wants to pee in your own suit? gross.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I increasingly feel that I will likely only ever be a technical/marketing writer. I guess it’s better than nothing. I still get to write, it still pays the bills. But it doesn’t fit with the vision I had for myself in my head.
So I totally get this: I do.
Also? I would like some french fries now.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Phoey. How did you know that I too…am grappling with such thoughts? It’s like you opened my head right up and plucked them forth to lay on the table for both of us to see…of course, different dreams for the two of us, but quite the same feelings. Are we really right where we’re supposed to be in perfect time…or is this just something we tell ourselves so that we don’t give up on a daily basis?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Okay I KNOW you’ve been told before but tis true.
YOU. ARE. A. WRITER.
A beautiful, talented, amazing writer.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Don’t give up just yet. I was over 40 when I finally achieved my desired ambition.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:10 am
I often feel this way, and then I remind myself of Grandma Moses. Girlfriend was like 99 when she sold her first painting, right?
April 30th, 2009 at 9:16 am
You’re most definitely a writer. There’s no escaping that. But I understand. I really understand.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Oh, how I understand. I feel like such a loser some days.
I won’t give up if you won’t.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
But unlike an astronaut, you don’t have to travel to space to fulfill your dream. You write; people read. By those parameters, you have already succeeded.
Still, I know you’re frustrated, and I’m sorry for that.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
You ALREADY are a writer. I don’t know what you are talking about. Crazy.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Do not EVER be OK with not being an astronaut.
I tell myself that every day.
Or a writer.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
You are a writer. No question, with so much talent.
The potential is a quantity outside of you, in the publishing world, not something are wasting. (It’s a matter of language and definition, I know, because I need the lectures too)
The thing you and I can control is time, and how we use it, and getting our asses in a chair. I remember going to a reading with you and we made promises to do that. I’m failing on my end, but may we can kick ourselves in the butt and try again? We have to. We have to do at least that much.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:53 am
As far as I know, there’s no upper age limit on being a ‘writer’. Just keep at it, you definitely have a voice.
May 1st, 2009 at 9:50 am
i love you. i hear you. i’ve missed you
May 1st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
You are SO a writer! (I posted today about how, if I’d become famous as planned at age 12, I’d be drunk on the cover of a tabloid right now. So, that worked out for me really well.)
May 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
As a kid, astronaut was on my list as well.
My tennis coach in my youth said he hated the word potential because he thought it indicated that you currently sucked. I think back on that and smile.
Knowing what you want to do…is huge. Huge. Dig in. We’re here for the ride. (uh, all that said, I know doubt all too well. we dine frequently together.)
May 1st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
There’s time. When it’s right, you’ll know.
May 1st, 2009 at 7:39 pm
It’s been said. You are a writer, a damn fine writer. Getting paid for it won’t mean you are more of a writer, only that you are marketable in some somebodies mind. Now the fact that you can’t live on that sucks.
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
never give up on your dream. Did you hear me??
NEVER..
I know I won’t.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
You’re a writer. Keep flying.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
You are a writer. No age limit on writing accomplishments. It will come.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Baby, you just said a mouthful! I don’t think I’m ever going to be an astronaut either. Or a writer, or a famous artist. Sometimes just thinking like that is enough to make me feel like I’m drowning. Sometimes I realize that most of us won’t be what we secretly dream of. Sometimes my hopes are so unshakeable that surely, surely my dreams will come true.
Love you babe, do what you love and try not to worry. I believe in you.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:23 am
i have soooo felt what you feel but not been able to voice it so beautifully. only a real writer, like YOU, can do that.
after years of struggling to find the answer, this is what i finally hit upon: lower expectations.
it’s not for everyone, but it’s working out really well for me.