Effort

Monday 6/10/24

I'm really letting down the side. My effort has been poor. I won't get anywhere like this. Not with everything I have to overcome. I need to be working 700 or 800% harder. I'm also not fighting as I need to be fighting, because I hate confrontation so much, but if I don't fight I'm basically working against myself like so many people already are and have been for a long time. I have to force myself. It's so hard to carry on. I had mentioned working on four stories earlier. These stories tower over anything anyone else is doing or can do. But they have no chance right now. I'm just doing them for if and when.

It's hard to do anything for if and when, let alone when your whole life, on your own, always on your own, in horrible circumstances, is for if and when. Everything is automatically closed before anything is made. By me, I mean. And a big part of that is because these people know what it is and the quality. So this person must be kept out and denied the chance. Even something like Image from before. You think I want to go into that? Expose all of that? Show why that Pamela Painter story was in there? Talk about and reveal what went on with them? Do the prose offs? It's horrible fitting that in, and having to do it. There's so much like that to do while doing all of the things I do and need to be doing. I can't keep letting myself down like this. I have to find the strength. I must create the same as I would as if all was guaranteed to be wonderful, for everything to get what it deserved, to get me what I deserve, and it's not all a case of if and when.

For the last hour or so I've been working on "Friendship Bracelet." Mostly the first page, some of the second. Work and work and work on this story. I hadn't looked at it in a while. That's a useful way to do things. And, later, when you're done, or think you're done, to make sure of things. That first page contains 231 words. As of tonight. The amount of time and effort I've sunk into that page over all of these months is staggering. It has to be the way that it has to be. What I'm asking of myself, the level I'm operating on now, goes so far beyond what anyone who has ever written would ever be thinking in the terms of with these expectations, standards, self-demands. And it bothers me--again, because of the locking out--in returning to this story again and seeing just how important it is. Being overwhelmed by how obvious its importance is. Your'e not going to have a more important piece of writing. The importance of the work, in terms of what it is, couldn't be clearer. It would be obvious to a stupid person. That sounds weird, like I almost wish it wasn't this important of a work. Because then it wouldn't be like there were millions of people being made to miss out on it right now and it wouldn't have all of these things it should be doing in the world were it not for the most petty, twisted, envious assholes. It'd just be another piece of writing. But my God, this couldn't be further from just another piece of writing.

My mother called me. There is a single person who ever calls me. It's not my family. People don't care or they're intimidated or they resent me and just about everyone believes they can treat me in ways that they'd never treat anyone else because I'm me. And to them I'm so smart and strong, etc., that the rudiments of human kindness and consideration are superfluous with this guy. We've talked about this before. If you write something that sucks, and your former professor publishes it, and you slap it up on Facebook and take a victory lap, 400 people will hit that like button because you're bad at what you do and they don't take you seriously with that thing. It's just lip service. It's not real. People will lie and go along, they'll fake it, they'll tell you what they think you want to hear when it doesn't matter one way or the other, because it's just whatever, but they won't be real. Take a look at my Facebook page some time. You've never seen anything like that, have you? Didn't think it was possible. It's not. Unless you're me. It wouldn't work--and doesn't work--that way for anyone else. That's just one example. But it's the big issue in microcosm.

So I answered in case it was an emergency--which says a lot that I'd think that way when I get a phone call--and I guess it was maybe because of some of these things instead that a call was made. I don't know. I'm never even asked how I am. Like it wouldn't be some unsolvable "how did that happen" mystery if a call came in from Boston PD saying this guy was dead. He just couldn't do it anymore. It's so fucking hard to keep doing this and enduring. But not so much as the "how are you" thing ever happens. And there's no mystery to the situation either. Or the quality of life.

But my mother did tell me that the other night, when my nephew and nieces slept over her house to celebrate the end of the school year, that Amelia--aka, my buddy, the four-year-old--wanted her mom. This is pretty predictable. So my mother said that they could call her, but there was no answer when they did. Briefly at a loss, Amelia then asked, "Can I call my buddy?" That was sweet. We are buddies. My mom said that I was probably asleep. I wasn't actually--this was during Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and I saw the whole game. I might be up working at two, but I may still be up from the day before, or I may have gotten up. I sleep in these tiny little pockets of repose that I stash away, almost as if they're hidden. I grab some sleep. So my mom in Illinois put the game on and said it was happening in Boston, and Amelia asked, "Is my buddy at the game?" and my mom was like, "I don't think so." I'm not counting her as the person who calls me, because, again, she's four. But it is funny. I make an effort with everybody. And I make an effort with these kids, but me and this one sort of just hit it off.