WHY DON'T I WANT THIS ENOUGH?

I really can't seem to lock in.

This is the first post I’ll be writing directly on the substack site, as opposed to writing in a word document and then copying and pasting. That’s a very important thing to note.

I missed a deadline recently.

It was a poetry thing, ten unpublished pieces to be submitted, a crazy huge prize money, more than enough time to do it. I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. I somehow missed it.

I thought that that would be enough to get me locked in, but yet, it isn’t. I don’t think I have changed all that much.

I’ve recently coined and parroted a phrase that quite encapsulates a feeling I’ve been having-

“To climb the mountain, I must first acknowledge that I am beneath it”

Ergo, to become a good person, I must first admit that I am not a good person. It is easier to safely handle a weapon if you accept that you’re holding one. That you have the power to cause damage.

And yet, I find a sort of lack of lucidity in my introspection. I am only injecting myself with cheap catharsis, and not actually becoming better.

The reason why it’s important that this essay is written directly on the website, is because it wouldn’t be written otherwise. I have three essays loading that I should have put out, that I should have written.

It seems the imagination of greatness is become to me, a barrier to an actual actualization. That in the vividness of my own mental masturbation, I lie negative on the aphantasia scale, gaining pleasure from the thought of doing something good. Yet, not daring to scatter the mirage of it, to reach for it, lest in the waving of my arms in front of me, I diffuse the clouds asunder. The clouds whose dew fragments light into this façade that brings me pleasure.

I have never read the dialogues, but I imagine I am the chud Plato writes about in the cave. Even in quoting, I confirm and confer the fact, I only know the idea of it, but not what it is.

There is something interesting about me, if you count the vague sense that there might be something interesting about me as something interesting in itself. And dare I dispel the notion?

I am not going to talk about executive dysfunction. I don’t believe I have it. No, I believe what I have is not so poetic, is not so Orphean or akin to the prisoner of AM in Harlan Ellison’s classic, and dare I, since I have already quoted without a citation Plato, extend my disrespect to Franz Kafka as well. I am not an insect in a bed, what I suffer from is not so poetic that I may call it suffering.

No, I am lazy.

I am comfortable.

I have no risk jarring enough nor reward enticing enough to evict me from my mattress. And I hate it.

If I wanted to I would. I would write the pieces about camp and make the edit. I would do something real about the shotdeck account and make my film treatment. I would work on my manuscript. If I really wanted this hard enough, I would put my heart into it.

Oh, but I feel it. My suffering may not be real, but I feel it. I want this. I want this so bad. I want to write, and create, and love, and be responsible. I want to be bold, and be able to say what I think, and be articulate about it. I want to forgive myself, I want to know myself, I want to love people, truly. Fundamentally as a person, I want to remember things about them, and I want to be. I want to create. I want to write the essays, and make the videos, I want to write the films and the poems and the short story and the novels. I really really want to, so much that every second hurts and haunts and pains and paints over me a drab coverage. It is agony each moment I endure the nothingness and continue alive, and in small breaths where I bleed I am somewhat grateful that I am lazy, lest I would do all I want, and indeed in a Cartesian sense, I do not want to think, in a Shakespearean sense, the second option, that is the answer.

I quote, without citations.

I am scared.

Of everything, that upon scrutiny, I will find it true that the only thing that exists about me is the vague sense that something exists about me. That I write the stories that I carry, and my prose is not beautiful nor my telling of them interesting, that they are only good as clouds of potential. I fear that I will write them and they will be all, and I will have no stories left to create. For I borrow from the world of forms, of course without citation, and it has grown to be bored of my poor translations of its beauty. In complexity, I am both abased and yet prideful as well, for I also fear in this that they will be good, and I will have nothing more. For maybe the greatness of any creation I may be burdened with, moulds the ideas much like a meteor that I watch, and dare I pull it down, knowing I am a dinosaur experiencing myself.

I am lazy, and scared, and boring, and I don’t want this enough. Because I have grown more interested in ideas than ideals, I have grown lust for the vagueness and shortness of the chemicals, I have neglected the soul. I have grown used to doing nothing.

I had an essay to write some time ago, about flowers and a road. I wish I had it written so I may quote it now. About the offer to get in a car to get to the destination faster, and I refuse it, for it is in my nature to walk and smell the roses, it is in my nature to inhale the breeze.

But oh, I fear I have gotten in the car without knowing, expecting to fast track it all. I am going to change soon, I am simply yet to encounter and immediately imbibe the fundamental truth that fundamental truths cannot be encountered and immediately imbibed, but must be understood and accepted with time and their vagueness.

This has been quite a lot of nothing, as have I. I hope I have changed. I wish for it, yet I know I haven’t.

I’ll post this now, because I know if I wait for all the grammar checks, I will post it never. I will again quote from a film I’m yet to see, with an image to express the rage of it. I should have seen this film a long time ago. Why haven’t I?

Why don’t I want this enough?

1 AM isn’t the best time to be editing a substack post, but I just watched whiplash. First of all, peak.

I think I should put in that I’m scared of not being enough. Of jumping into it, of trying, and my trying not being enough. That I am not good enough. I am scared of being too much and being too little, scared of being me, because what if me doesn’t cut it.

And now I must rephrase my question. Why don’t I want this enough. What else is there to be asides myself? I can either be myself or be nothing at all. I am a frog in an already boiling pot and yet I am deathly scared to jump into the fire.

What if I burn, yea, what if I am not a frog at all? What if I am a flame and the water is the suffocating feeling filling my insides in the stagnant stalemate of who I am and who I wish to be. Forget the hope in fact, what if I burn?

What else can I ever be if not myself, and what if myself isn’t good enough? Well, what if? There is nothing else to want.

Why don’t I want this enough.