Some Cosmic Sea

What is my story?

I tend to write with a certain balance of truth and fiction. A lot of these things have happened, although perhaps not these things. Perhaps not like that. Perhaps not at that point. The trouble comes when I try to see the story. The thread holding it all together. When I try to look into my life, at my life, ahead of my life, and see where it's all leading. What climax waits for me? Which of these things, these people, these events are the themes stretching throughout my time? Shaping me? Explaining more about me than, well, I could?

At the moment, I am in the middle of a sort of creative hold. What do I do next? I have a novel that I have finished, and I don't know what to do with it. Is it something that I want to represent? Is it me? Is it worth putting out there to be scrutinized and forgotten? Should I make a go of it?

If I was a character, what would I want to be written for me?

Well fuck. If I was writing the bastard, I would crush him. I would kill his dreams. I would torture him to no end.

By sitting on it and spending hours and days and months and years on this, isn't that what I'm doing? Wasting time. Crushing myself. Killing my dreams. Torturing myself to no end.

But... What if it's shit?

"Hey, did you see that thing Asa did?"

"Hahaha, yeah, fucking GARBAGE."

I know I shouldn't give a shit what anyone thinks or whether or not it's good enough for anyone else, but I do. As if I have some sort of reputation to uphold. What about it makes me nervous? That some fuckface from high school might see it and laugh? That some future employer might read it and find me the idiot I damn near know I am? That I might cross some invisible line rendering me not an assumed, but a true fool?

Does any of that matter?

"You'll never know if you don't try."

Sound advice. Sure. What if I don't want to know?

For example, would you want to know when and how you die? Would you obsess over it? Would you try to avoid it? Would you ever be able to let it out of your mind?

Maybe I just don't want to know when I'll die. Maybe it's all better left unknown.

Out here in the infinite black of space. Microscopic, adrift in some cosmic sea of never known dust. With a million million others throughout history. The unknown. The safe.

Maybe I need to grow some fucking balls.