I am a worried man

I am worried that I will never be a great writer. I try and try, I practice incessantly, I make the letters line up properly like words, and make the words line up properly like sentences, and it looks write to me, but then I get these great moments of doubt, and so I go to these online places where the other writers are. And I see that they argue all the time, saying "no, you are wrong, it is not that, it is this", and I realise that I do not have that part inside me which can manfully ignore the various possibilities and seize instead upon only one way in which something can be, can be understood, can not be, can not be right, is, is wrong. And so I am sad because I know I can never be a writer until I learn this thing which I do not have within me. And I am sad because of this.

I am sad because I try to play with my Pookahs, but every time I think I am getting the hang of it they run around me laughing and I have to stand here like the piggy in the middle with my trousers round my ankles. Why can I not learn how to use belts properly? It is the fundamental thing to Pookah games, belting up and not being caught by an unexpected flop.

I am sad because I want to read the things other people are saying about the world and think "yes, I know, this is right, or this is wrong", but I cannot. I read and think, "I have seen this before, it is dressed up in a clever new fashion, but it is an old game". And I curse myself for having analysed so many things so deeply that I cannot watch the conjurers do their tricks any more.

I am sad because I would like to listen to rare and recherche music and tell everybody that I am listening to something that only 1024,768,640,480 other people in the world will have bought, instead of the 2^64 unthinking listeners, but I do not know how to find such things. And when I have bought some of them, they have sounded so strange to me that I did not want to tell people about how I felt while listening to them. I am sad because I like to listen to some music that nobody would want to read about, only to listen to.

I am sad because although I can be disdainful of my partner and her daughters and use them as foils to my acerbic wit, I do not hate them enough to wish that they should put paper bags over their heads while I am with them, or thinking about them, or writing of them, and I realise that *that* is why I can never be a writer, I cannot manage my misogynistic side. I cannot be cruel enough to torture, maim, and kill my creations for my own amusement, let alone my readers'.

I am sad, because I do not have it in me to be offhandedly cruel, and I do not have it in me to be intentionally cruel, I can only be accidentally cruel. And I am worried about that, because I feel that I am only half a man because of it.

I am worried that I am sad, and nobody will ever be able to help me, not ever, and things will always be like this and never change, and I am going to be sad for ever.

But I am mostly worried that I am not sad enough and can never be a proper writer.

Heh, as if I am. Bollocks to you dualistic witterers and duelistic witticists. Kiss my lying arse, on one cheek, or on the other cheek, or right between the cheeks. Yin and yang, I call the cheeks, and the Tao, I call the whole between the extremes. Kiss my Tao.

* how come all
* your poets fall
* into despondencies?
* And write it down
* for us to read
* every indignity?
* Not such worthy specimens,
* these creatures,
* hardly fit for
* what you call
* the good life

* And it seems
* the thinkers you call
* greatest,
* are the ones
* who fall ill young
* and pine away.
* How can they help
* but drag the species down?