I've been telling myself that when I look back on 2003 I will be able to count among my accomplishments two worthy achievements:
1) I graduated from college.
2) I quit smoking cigarettes.
On days when my job search was going lousy, such as when rejection letters were received, or checkbooks were unbalanced, I would cling to these two facts, and inventory the contents of my character.
It was a long and stretched-out-sticky-taffy-that-fell-in-the-dirt-but-you-eat-it-any-way-unending-sentence summer. Granted, I had a lot of fun. Granted, many people would envy the level of sloth I devolved into (approx. pygmy marmoset with mononucleosis). But there is something about being unwillingly unemployed that unlocks my sense of being a failure and lets in run rampaging through the garden of my self-esteem.
Another thing that has been dragging me down is that I've neglected my writing. This happens every summer. I tell myself all year that come June, I'll be a poetic volcano spewing millions of pages into the atmosphere until they block out the sun. I tell myself that this summer, I'll finally finish that novel I've been working on for the past four years. Well, it never happens. I'm not diligent enough by far to be considered a serious writer.
But the summer bummer dude this totally blows attitude falls away in the fall, and I'm putting things back on track.
So here are the essentials, the details will come later:
And you know what? I'll never be satisfied. I'll never be satisfied. I'll never be satisfied.