babbling

It's self-indulgent, really, isn't it?

Sure, I can sit here and put all sorts of names to this invisible malaise that steals my joy and makes my brain run slow, but it's self-indulgent, really. To think that I could be good, to think that I could be well-known, to think that I could chase and catch that fickle fucker fame.

I vacillate between some form of utter self-delusion and self-loathing. If I'm as good as I think I am, where are my awards? Where are my haters? Where is this proof of my existence other than my meaningless words on a page?

I am full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I am angry about all sorts of things, white-hot in my righteous rage, and yet I fall prey to the same words that wound me, that feeling - insistence - that to be the only is to be the best, to be the best is to be the only, and that if I'm not the only then I'm overshadowed.

I write these self-flagellating raw posts out of my head and at the same time I loathe myself for them - what am I doing but indulging in some bit of amusing self-promotion? I write in the interests of honesty, but who am I fooling? It's all just this exercise in pretentious word-smithery, pretending that I'm better than you because I'm more honest, or some nonsense like that.

I wouldn't be writing these self-searching pieces of bullshit if I were writing real honest genuine work, of course. This is easy and requires no research, no work, no anything except the moving of my fingers and giving written voice to the constant voice inside my head.

What do I strive for? I don't even know, except for this yawning hunger in my chest for more - for better, for faster, for higher, for more and more and more.

Maybe I could have been a genius if I'd had an axe to grind, but I've had axes to grind and I've ground them and I've come out on the other side with nothing - maybe I didn't grind hard enough! At the end of the day, the three other fingers still point the blame back at me and self-indulgently I welcome it, roll in the mire of anger and frustration because it's easier than moving on.

Easy is a funny word. Is something worth less because it's easy? Probably, which is why these bitter ramblings I post out of a desperate sense of something unnameable detract from my value, but I've never known when to shut up.

It's self-indulgence, really.