Hi again, I’m Thomas, and I’m a bullshitter.

It’s really bad. I mean, you can probably tell already. Once I get typing I just blurt out stream of consciousness until I get tired of hearing myself talk (which takes too long if you ask me). I could get more into the reasons why, but that’s not really important. I was talking about writing, which is the arrogance that brought me here.

In “The Gay Science” Friedrich Nietzsche writes a small dialogue:

“A: I am annoyed by and ashamed of my writing; writing is for me a pressing and embarrassing need, and to speak of it even in a parable disgusts me.

B: But why, then, do you write?

A: Well, my friend, to be quite frank: so far, I have not discovered any other way of getting rid of my thoughts.

B: And why do you want to get rid of them?

A: Why I want to? Do I want to? I must.

B: Enough! Enough!”

To that end, so I. Well, I’m young and stupid and I like to write stories. I’d rather them be out on the page than in my head, resounding and being forgotten this way or that. So I, a writer, must write, and because I must write, I am a writer. It’s a sickly Ouroboros. Maybe painters and musicians are like that too, and that’s why they hardly ever actually retire the pen. Still, there is a difference in the later art of Roger Waters and his old bandmate David Gilmour. What that is I’ll leave to professionals to decide. I don’t critique music, I have terrible taste.

The problem: Nobody cares.

Well, okay, that much was obvious. It’s a weird fact of the internet and really of the world as a whole. Well, that apart from the other section of matters in regards to the New Critics, art as math and all of that. Anyway, you’ve got to have something else to really make it, or you just got to be lucky. I’m painfully ordinary bordering on awful and I’m horribly unlucky. Still, I can’t wake up one day at this point and not be a writer. Parsing my lack of talent with my inability to not produce is difficult. On the one hand I could just let this stuff rot away in my Google Drive and croak one day, or I could try and get it published by people who don’t care and don’t want the type of stuff I write that is any good (though the ones that are of any minor quality are so few and far between it’s probably hard to tell which I am referencing or if one has yet to appear).

The problem: You don’t have to be good to be a writer.

I don’t mean that to degrade other writers, but that’s pretty much objective fact. I mean, speaking to the vocabulary, you don’t have to make a million dollars per canvas to be called a “painter”. You don’t have to be recognized by the French aristocracy to be called a “poet”. Basically, being an artist requires next to no skill at all. I count myself in that area. However it is the functional ability of the individual which dictates whether their art is successful or otherwise. Hence why I often call myself useless; I can’t get my work published, so I’m useless as a writer. But I still am one. Technically, in terminology, I am alike Stephen King. But there’s a difference, he’s world famous, I’m nobody. Not speaking to skill, which King has me beat by cosmic light years, the only difference between us is that he was/is able to perpetuate his persona and proliferate his stories into media. He monetized successfully. Good for him. I have zero chance of getting a television mini series. That’s just the facts.

The problem: Standing (Yes, we’re talking about Class now)

I don’t mean to necessarily blame my lack of talent or skill on my poverty. Both it and my lack of skill are a result of my own choices. It’s less that where I am has an effect on my situation as a writer and more what others situations beget effects onto them. If your family is middle class and sends you to college, good job, you’re that one step closer to becoming a validated author. I think it’s good that people are blessed in ways like that, but looking up at them from below feels a touch, well, it’s like when you introduce a friend to a game you’ve been playing for months and they catch on quick. So quick, in fact, that they surpass you in no time and get first place at a competition for that game. Like Yu-Gi-Oh, for example. If I introduce someone to it and then they proceed to rise above me in no time at all, sure, I’m happy for them, but there is that little demon in the brain that is a little spiteful, you know? Resentment, sure, envy, definitely. I try to be happy for others, because I think, given the same chances as them, I’d probably just squander it away anyhow. Whether that is a part of my character grown within my current place, or whether that’s inherent to the nature of my soul is really unknowable. It’s useless playing “what if” games anyway.

I just wish people understood their advantage. It’s not as easy when you’re untalented but still have the awful disease that is a drive to create. I wish I didn’t, in all honesty. I’d rather know how to work on cars, or how to weld, or even better; how to do math properly. I mean, that’s what creates worth, that’s what defines functional value in the world. But still, I remain a writer. Were I to suddenly learn those other things through great effort or sudden inspiration I would still be a writer, and would fall prey to its trappings all the same.

The Problem: I just kinda suck?

Ultimately that’s the case. It could just be trying to head my detractors off at the pass, or it could be genuine, who’s to say? I think it’s the latter, but you may think the former. Impossible to define, we default to facing the facts of the page. If I am ingenuine, and just seeking praise or pity, I haven’t really done that, I’ve just made a laughing stock of myself by creating this website (which, ultimately, is why I have held off on doing so for so long). If I’m being honest about my feelings on the matter, then that doesn’t really help paint a solid picture of who I actually am as a person. But that doesn’t really matter either. This is a website with the distinct purpose of letting people access stories which I’ll never be able to get published anywhere else. That’s probably for good reason, but I’m too up my own ass to care anymore.

Problem: Ego

Achievement is one hell of a word. It really sums up a lot of the problems for a lot of people. Over-achievement, under-achievement. The gradient between the two called “Normality” and so on (Hold your barf please). The problem, well documented by people smarter than me, is that once you get a taste of that sweet drug called an “inflated ego”, you really can’t live without it. You’re just chasing the next fix, whether you know it or not. Those who pretend to have no ego are just fooling themselves. It’s called psychology, it’s called virtue signaling. And by that I mean in the subconscious sense, not in that lazy political way which people misuse or over-attribute the phrase.

I happen to be acquainted with one right now. A “selfless” person who cannot accurately acknowledge the intent behind those actions. Not to talk shit, I do it sometimes too, but I’m internally consistent, I lie myself in circles so that I don’t have to call myself an idiot for no reason. I get a pretty cool reason to call myself stupid instead. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that she chases it, that sense of moral achievement, or personal or career achievement, even though she is not consciously aware of it. If I had to guess it’s probably true that most people don’t actively think about it, if I’m being honest I probably do it in a bunch of ways that I’m not aware of, though I try to chastise my every action. Still, we’re chasing that purple dragon, and for me it’s publication.

The Problem: I’m A Writer

I think if I had never been published this whole thing would have faded back into the obscurity which it resided within for a good chunk of my life from the time I was about 14 until I was 21. The “writing thing” would have just been a phase and I’d probably be better off. I wouldn’t have been so internal, I would have not made poor choices because of my intellectualization of my perceived trauma. I wouldn’t have wasted so much of my damn time. But here we are, and here I am, and I’m just playing a little game of “what if” as though I hadn’t said that was pointless.

I think you chase whatever the first stimulus to your ego is. For some people that’s music, for others its painting. For some it’s trades, for others its math. For me, unfortunately, people and teachers always said I was a good writer. After the whole GATE thing dropped from sight after Elementary, writing was the only thing that stuck around in people’s mouths. Like a curse almost. Because really, though I said you don’t need to be skilled to be a painter or to be a musician, you do have to have some knowledge. Well, the entry fee is higher. For painters you have to buy paint, a fairly finite resource, or else get software that is expensive if you have no idea what you’re doing. Same for music, you have to buy the instruments, you have to pay for the mixing programs.

All you need to write is a pen and paper, and baring that, a Google Account. I’ve been writing in Google Docs for almost ten years now. I mean, it’s really got zero cost. That’s kind of why poetry is such a damn hard field to get into as well (Besides the, well, without getting into it, frustrating mathematics of poetry), because the entry fee is so low that millions of people get engaged. Prose is less populated than Poetry I think, but it is no less competitive. If anyone can write, then what are the chances you’ll even be seen? Then, to create your own unique voice is to differentiate yourself? Well, sure, but do people want to read your unique voice? Do they feel engaged by it? Does it serve the magazines needs for active, urgent, fiction? Well, no. They need something that goes A-B-C-D, or, at the least A-B-D-C-E. That’s a bad metaphor, I’m good at bad metaphors.

It’s more that we’ve decided in the modern age what we want and what we don’t. What’s acceptable and what’s too niche for acceptance. Not that one or the other is good or bad, but rather that it won’t help in the slightest to entertain the niche. Especially if it’s a niche of one. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Do I think it’s shit? Sure. Do I have a better suggestion? No. I mean, who am I to rant about that? Let them run it. Let it ride to the bank, let it ride to books and movie deals. It doesn’t affect me but for my inability to participate.

The Problem: I’m dumb.

I don’t like writing stories like Rosa Rugosa or Tokyo Comedy. They are, objectively, the most marketable things I could write because they have conflict, climax, and resolution, but they are inherently hollow and ultimately dead stories because of it. Tomato is closer to something I like to write. Tomato was a fluke, of that I am way too confident. It’s not a terribly good story in its presentation and my phrasing has aged poorly because it was written almost four years ago now, but it’s still a fluke. It made it where something like The Rain of Monpe can’t. To be able to parse why that is, that is the problem for my head. I can’t grasp why, except that what I like to write is simply not what people want to read.

The Problem: I’m uneducated.

From the sixth grade to the twelfth I hardly did a single homework assignment, and from sixth grade on I gradually did less and less schoolwork at all. I took French 1 two years in a row, failed both years, somehow getting shoved into French 2 the next year. I was such a bad student that when I showed up for my first day of French 2 the teacher looked at me with genuine confusion and asked “What are you doing here?” I was scheduled for her class, I had to follow the schedule. Despite never getting the credits, I didn’t even get a foreign language scheduled to me for my senior year, and after the beginning of second semester I transferred to a continuation, then an “adult school” for the summer. I made up the credits, but man was I not about school. But hey, I guess I technically did graduate. Never thought I did, but apparently I made up the credits after all.

Obviously I didn’t go to college. I hated school, and besides that I could hardly focus in class. Call it what you want, I just wasn’t good at being at school. I was lazy, I didn’t care one way or the other. The reason for why I sucked differed depending on the day, so I won’t go and claim to some autistic spectrum disorder which is honestly only a fraction of the issue, if at all.

Conclusion: There’s not really much of a problem after all.

In reality, none of that matters. Like I said, it’s just bullshit. Excuses, self-fulfilled curses, and rants about nothing that really has anything to do with the point being made. Talk and blather spent in circles so long the point gets lost for the trees.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t really waste your time on this website. You shouldn’t give me your money, and you should drink more water. Your time would be better spent with people you love, your money spent on things which make you happy, and your body needs hydration. Reading my stupid ass stories won’t benefit you in any way.

Still, I’m a writer. I’m chasing that Purple Dragon called a Fulfilled Ego. But I can’t even say “at least I’m honest” because, really, am I? How much of this was honesty and how much was nonsense? It’s impossible to tell. Maybe it’s all performance art, maybe it’s all excuses for a shattered ego. Maybe I’m the African Prince that robbed your grandmother.

Just because it said so on the internet, doesn’t make it true.

Still, I’ll say I’m a writer.

Do with that information what you will.

Sincerely, Thomas Jefferey “TJ” Daly