Category: Inspiration

The Depths: Are you OK?

‘I’ve got friends by my side. I’ve got hope in my eyes. And dreams to aspire to. And the whole wide world to watch below.’
-Joel Birch

This Thursday the 11th of September is a very special day. I know that there are the obvious reasons as to why September 11th is forever marked as a day of remembrance, celebration of life and triumph over adversity. I can still remember standing in front of the television dressed in my school uniform watching as the modern world was forever altered. But it’s an event much smaller, yet no less important that marks September 11th as a day I believe should all mark in our calendars.

This Thursday, the 11th of September is the fifth annual R U OK day. A day where we are asked to create open dialogue with our friends and family, and ask the question we often neglect to ask in our overly erratic and face paced lives: Are you OK?

Founded in 2009 by Gavin Larkin, R U OK? Strives to inspire us to create meaningful dialogue to assist those of us struggling with mental illness.

As someone who has stumbled more times than he cares to count, the day is something that I whole-heartedly endorse. And I implore every single one of you to take a moment and sit down with a family member or friend and create a moment of intimacy and support that may just save a life. Sometimes a kind word or a moment of compassion means more to someone than you could ever possibly imagine.

Oftentimes on this blog I make light of the fact that I’ve pushed myself beyond breaking point with my own mental wellbeing. I reference my sometimes deliberate downward spirals into despair as a means of creating art and establishing a unique voice as I strive to be a singularity. But the truth is that some of my lesser moments have been no laughing matter. I’ve been sick. I’ve been low. And I’ve been totally alone, picking at my own mental scabs so as to leave my bones exposed. And while I do play on my own fractured mind with tongue in cheek, I cannot stress enough just how much I relied on the support of the people I love, yet tend to push away to save me from myself in my desperate times.

Even now I appear to be calm, happy, and at peace with myself. But the truth is there is a fire burning inside of me that will always threaten to consume my soul and leave me empty and alone once more. Am I OK? Perhaps on the surface I am. But the truth is this: I torture myself through my writing. I currently have two manuscripts under construction, a blog that I bombard with wildly erratic tales of elation and tragedy, and a completed novel under consideration for professional representation. I create acquaintances not friends; because I struggle to let people in for fear that they will see the monster in me. I’m in love with someone who sees me as an absolute cluster-fuck of raw emotion and insecurity. And sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder what it would be like if I never started this writing shit. I question whether I’d be happier, whether I’d be more willing to accept my own limitations, or more willing to let other people in.

The point is that our greatest failing as a species is that we only have the ability to see what is on the surface. When we look at our friends and family and see them smile, we naturally assume that everything is OK; that they are happy. But sometimes there is a fragility hidden beneath their smiles, a vulnerability concealed in their laughter, which can only be discovered if we take the time to truly connect with them. Have you ever heard the story of Pagliacci? It’s a simple story within one of my favourite novels of all time: Watchmen. It goes like this…

I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Life seems harsh, and cruel. Says he feels all alone in threatening world. Doctor says: “Treatment is simple. The great clown – Pagliacci – is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. “But doctor…” he says “I am Pagliacci.” Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

Sad isn’t it? Yet so true. We misconstrue happiness and we fail to see just how powerful our thoughts, our feelings, and our words can truly be. But all is not lost, and although we so often become consumed with our own lives we can still stop and make time for each other. Unity is intrinsic and compassion, honesty, and candour are the only cure to mental illness. Take me for example: I’ve got pride by the fucking bucketful and before this blog I would never have even considered sharing my lower moments with anyone. I thought that my depression was a weakness and something to be ashamed of. And while it is a weakness, that weakness is in the chemistry of the chemical make up in my brain. Not in my character. My illness and my lower points are not something to be ashamed of at all. In fact, being able to speak about mental illness is about the bravest thing anyone can do. Having the guts to say ‘you know what? Fuck it. I’m not OK’ is something that should be celebrated not condemned.

So, this Thursday the 11th of September I beg of you to ask the question of those around you: Are you OK? Listen, empathise, and grow together. To paraphrase the epigraph above; help those who are low to realise that they have friends by their side; that they can have hope in their eyes. And that they can have dreams to aspire to; and a whole wide world to watch below. Your kindness just may pull someone back from the depths of their own self destruction. Take it from someone who has been there.

A bullet with butterfly wings

“It doesn’t matter if you fall down; get the fuck back up.”
– James “Buddy” Neilsen.

This post originally came to life a few weeks ago under the title of Trust in Fear. But as the weeks progressed and I procrastinated over whether or not upload it, the premise altered and the original title seemed somewhat counterintuitive. So I sat on the idea and fumbled my way through a few redrafts until very little of the original entry remained and I finally thought fuck it, let’s just bang this out and see what happens. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, today we are talking about dreams.

As you are probably well aware, last month I embarked on a journey halfway around the world to pitch my heart out to the men and women who could ultimately make my dreams of becoming a published author a reality. And, if you were kind enough (or potentially bored enough) to sift through my second to last post you are probably aware that the whole process went pretty damn well. Right now my work is with a number of agencies throughout the United States, and I’m sitting on my hands awaiting a response that could potentially alter the course of my life. I have a dream of being published, and last month I took action.

I can see you rolling your eyes right about now thinking yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before. Your dreams don’t work unless you do, Chris. So what?

Well, maybe it was incorrect of me to say we are talking about dreams per say. Maybe I would have been better off opening with an impassioned speech about failure, because the duo really are inseparable. Just like there would be no heaven without hell, or no light without dark, there can be no dreams or success without the very real possibility of failure. And it’s because of this rather simple analogy that I have come to see everything I ever dream of as a bullet with butterfly wings…

…It sounds poetic doesn’t it? A bullet with butterfly wings; I wish I could take ownership for coining the phrase but I can’t. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine it, two big beautiful wings that unfurl into a glorious kaleidoscope of colour from a hideously dull shell casing with so much potential to maim. It’s beautiful, it’s dangerous, it’s wondrous, and macabre.

Nevertheless I’m learning that just as every cloud has a silver lining, so does every dream of beauty and success have the potential to blow up in your face. Sometimes we take risks to chase down everything we’ve ever dreamed of (like landing a book deal, snagging our dream job, finding a partner, or buying that new car), knowing that the reward if we are successful far outweighs the harm presented to us by that dull shell casing standing in our path. Sometimes we trust in fear and take a leap of faith, because if we don’t; then we’ll spend our whole lives wondering what could have been.

I recently took a leap of faith like this. I’ve taken a couple actually. The New York trip was one that went surprisingly well. But on this particular occasion I found myself attempting to capture the beauty of a bullet with butterfly wings, only for it blow up in my face. In layman’s terms: I fucked up. I took a risk and it backfired, seemingly costing me something rather incredible.

But as much as the wounds from the bullet that pierced my flesh sting right now – in fact it’s my ego that’s hurting the most. There is still always the slightest of chances that the bullet that struck you can still become something beautiful again. Sure, right now it’s damaged, but those big beautiful wings are still there just waiting to unfurl and show you magnificence beyond your wildest imagination. That’s the allure of dreams, and that’s the beauty of failure. Just because we fall, just because we fail or fuck up, it doesn’t mean that we have to give up. In life we are always afforded the opportunity to pick ourselves up off the floor, brush of the dirt that reminds us of our tumble and try again, armed with the knowledge of where we went wrong the first time.

It’s a rather warped analogy I know. But to me as I sit here and lick my wounds and learn from my mistakes, I have the chance to understand just what failure tastes like and how to better prepare myself for the next fall. If my manuscript appraisals amount to nothing and I’m left sitting in the dirt once more I will have the experience to pick myself back up and try again. Dreams only work as hard as you do. And sometimes trusting in fear and taking a leap of faith is worth it, even if you fall and all you achieve is just letting your dreams know exactly what your intentions are. Or even that they are dreams in the first place.

Dreams

“I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream. Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from, where happiness comes from.”
– Lisa Bu

Inspire

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
-Steve Jobs.

A weakness of flesh (Reach for the stars)

‘The weakness of flesh is to settle for less than we have the potential to be.’
-Jesse Leach.

When you read something filled with such profundity and insightfulness as the quote above you can’t help but stop and think about your own shortcomings. How many times have you settled for less than you had the potential to be simply because you didn’t have the courage to push that little bit further, or reach that little bit higher and grasp everything that you have ever wanted? If you’re like ninety nine percent of the world’s population then you can probably think of a handful of times when you’ve sold yourself short for whatever reason. Maybe you were tired of trying; maybe you were afraid of the success you were striving for, or feared looking foolish if you did fail. Whatever the reason is, at some point in your life you have settled for less than you were meant to be. We all have.

If this is true then one must ask why mankind has evolved with such a fundamental flaw in our design. Or maybe even ask how the fuck we ever managed to evolve in the first place. I mean surely if it is in our nature to fall short of our dreams then shouldn’t we have stopped evolving somewhere between a half-formed zygote and a fucking chimp? Whatever, the evolution of the human mind and body is a conversation for another day. All I want to know is if our weakness as a species is to accept complacency, then how the hell am I ever meant to achieve everything I dream about? How am I supposed to become a published author? How am I supposed to see the world? How am I supposed to form meaningful relationships? Or even be happy?

Well thankfully, this crippling weakness that has been bestowed upon us doesn’t afflict every decision or action we make. I can make friends, and I can be happy. I can even see the world if I bust my arse and rustle up enough cash to do so. No, this debilitating mindset of settling only rears its hideous face in the midst of moments or thought patterns that have the power to define our lives. Self-doubt as it is commonly known serves no other purpose than to derail our dreams and see us fall agonisingly short of where we really should be.

For those of you who have been following my web-log for some time now you are probably well aware that there have been times in my life when I’ve settled. There have been moments when publishers or agents have asked me to make minor tweaks to my works in order to make them more marketable or palatable, and in my infinite stupidity I’ve refused. I’ve told myself that I am a singularity (and I still believe that I am a highly unique individual), and that as such I shouldn’t have to change my works to suit the needs of others, no matter how subtle those changes actually are. But what if these poor decisions weren’t me refusing to change who I am? What if in actual fact they were moments of me settling for less than I had the potential to be simply because I was ultimately afraid of what would happen next if I did follow through with something?

It’s an interesting question. And the truth is that there is no real way of knowing what would have happened if I’d been smart enough to follow through with the advice that was offered to me. I could have had a book published by now, or I could have done heeded the advice of others and still failed to secure that elusive contract that I so desperately strive for. But no matter what could have happened, it now never will because I settled instead of reaching for the fucking stars. Because I was weak and I lacked the courage to push just that little bit further in order to achieve I now have to forge a new path forward in this world of manuscripts, agents and publishers.

-I realise that up until this point this post probably sounds a little negative. But I promise you that it’s not. See the thing is that I know I’ve messed up a few potential opportunities in the past. I’ve failed to follow up on rewrites; I’ve abandoned scripts, or burned bridges with publishers and agents. Shit, I even threw away writing altogether for a space in time. But without those mistakes or missed opportunities I wouldn’t be the writer that I am right now. I wouldn’t have the confidence to sit here and acknowledge my weaknesses and faults and I wouldn’t be able to make a conscious effort to learn from them.

Every decision that I make nowadays in regards to my writing I do so with a calculated mindset designed to constantly bring out the very best in me. Take my last post for example: I wrote about my desire to travel half way around the globe to hunt down an opportunity. And I did so because if I didn’t go public with my intentions then I would never have followed through. I would have settled for less than I truly deserved and come July would have still been sitting at home cursing my poor decision making skills for not having the balls to follow through with something again. But instead, I took to the screen and I made my intentions known so that if I pulled out I would have looked like a fool. Two days later my ticket was secured and trip confirmed.

I believe that the quote used to open this post is indeed highly profound and incredibly accurate. The weakness of flesh is indeed it’s acceptance of settling for less than it deserves to be. But you can overcome it. Once you identify a weakness you can turn it into a strength. You can train for it, adapt to accommodate it, and ultimately overcome anything as long as you have the fortitude to keep pushing forward even when you’re no longer sure that you can.

New York, New York

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‘The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.’
-Jordan Belfort.

So there’s this opportunity that has presented itself. It’s a chance for me to actually grow a pair of balls and take my roadshow of misguided tales and prose across the world in the hopes of securing a contract with a publisher or agent. Imagine that: no longer would I be that disgruntled writer sitting at his kitchen table penning his inner most thoughts onto scraps of paper or punching them into a word processor. I’d have made it. I’d be a star…

…Well maybe not a star. But at least I’d finally be taking some serious steps towards my dreams.

This opportunity is the kind that comes along once in a lifetime. An opportunity that would see me sitting face to face with the men and women that could make my dreams come true. I would be afforded the chance to pitch my scripts to them in person; I would be able to field their questions, capture their interests and (hopefully) inspire them to believe in my visions as much as I do. It sounds fantastic. And believe me when I say that I’d do anything for an opportunity like this. There’s just one little problem: that opportunity is in New York City in July of this year. As of right now I’m over 9,600 miles away from where I need to be in roughly five months’ time.

At first this sounds like quite the hurdle. How the fuck does one travel almost ten thousand miles in order to chase his dreams? Well, all I can say is thank God for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their rag tag crew who made their own vivid dreams a reality. I don’t want to sound like a jukebox cranking out tired old clichés, but after taking a few words of inspiration from Mr Belfort above I’m telling myself that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

So rather than do what I would usually do and throw my hands in the air and curse at the world that such an opportunity should arise on the opposite side of the world, I’m trying to take proactive steps to reach out and grab my dreams by the coat tails. My theory is that if I can manage to make that momentous leap and grab the fringes of my dream’s cloak then then I should be able to claw my way forward from there until I’ve got the fucker pinned to the floor.

Right now my novel is undergoing another round of editing. This time I’ve enlisted the help of an editor located in (surprise, surprise) the USA. It seems to make sense to me that if I’m going to take a gamble and try and spruik my wares in the American market then I should get a little insider knowledge from someone already on the scene. While that happens I’m plugging away at my job; busting my arse to ensure that when the time comes I’ve got enough money that I don’t find myself sleeping rough in the streets of New York as I try and hunt down success.

And while all is that is happening I’m still trying to focus as much time and energy on the one thing that keeps me sane in times like these: my writing. I’m still putting pen to paper whenever I can, admittedly I’m currently doing so with a little more direction than usual; which is a small victory in itself. Whether or not I can make this small sliver of an opportunity work remains to be seen. But even if it does fail I’ll know that it wasn’t through lack of trying. For the first time in my writing career I’m prepared to cast aside that bullshit story that I tell myself is stopping me from achieving my goals and give this my all.

Monsters

‘We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realised they were inside us.’
-Sam Steven

Confession time: I’ve been on a bit of a downward spiral as of late. Ever since my last post I’ve been struggling to find the urge to even turn my laptop on each day, let alone write something worth reading. In fact I could probably count the amount of times I’ve actually written anything on one hand, and the most I ever managed to produce in one sitting was about two hundred and fifty words. That, my dear reader, is hardly the way to go about finishing one of the multitudes of manuscripts currently sitting half-finished on my hard drive.

So why this complete lack of willpower to create? Why after coming so far with my craft of the past year and a half have I suddenly taken such a momentous step backward leaving me hopelessly floundering through a period of self-loathing? The truth is that it could be any number of things; or more likely it’s a combination of a few influences that has me suddenly apathetic about pretty much everything once again. There’s the medical scare that my partner underwent recently, plus the whole Christmas/end of year wind down that sees just about everybody making excuses for their laziness. Then there’s work matters, family issues, financial deadlines, and just about anything else you can think of that is currently plaguing my mind and literally killing off my desire to write.

These issues are my monsters. They are the things that once lived under the bed and occupied but a fraction of my time as I quickly checked that they were being held at bay before I resumed my everyday life. But somehow, somewhere, the monsters managed to crawl from underneath their shadowy caves and find themselves a home anew inside of my heart and mind. At some point I stopped needing to check for the monsters underneath my bed because they were already inside my head, and they were already fucking shit up.

One of the greatest issues that I have with being a writer is the sole crushing thoughts that usually accompany an overactive mind. I can deal with the loneliness. I can deal with the ridicule of manuscripts shunned, or even the distain of the fucking mouth breathers of the world that assume you are weird or different because you have the intellectual capacity to articulate yourself. But sometimes I really struggle with the monsters of my own mind that constantly over analyse everything. Sometimes I just wish I could step back and take something at face value rather than analysing it until I am certain that understand every minute detail of it. Sometimes I just wish I didn’t feel the need to question everything.

-But this isn’t a negative post. No. This is in fact a therapeutic addition to my ever burgeoning catalogue of thoughts. For you see, one of my greatest joys as a writer is that I do question everything. I love that I’m not willing to accept the world at face value, or that I wish to see more than one horizon in my future. All I am saying is that when times get tough and those monsters that once inspired you to create decide to turn on you instead… Well, you’re kind of fucked.

Right now I’m in that place. That frame of mind where I need to distance myself from my writing and I need to seek out the monsters of my mind and drag them back into the shadows underneath my bed where they belong. It sounds easy enough on paper; and the truth is that it is. The truth is that right now there are people all around the world facing situations that make anything I have ever dealt with feel like a fucking farce. And they are doing so with more gusto and determination that I am. These people are taking to their own monsters with blades held at the ready while I’m wallowing around in self-pity as mine eat my mind from within. I know that I can overcome them. We all can. But we actually have to want to. And up until this post I just haven’t even cared to try.

So, without further ado, here’s to the ensuing battle to come. Here’s to kicking the monsters of my mind in the teeth and dragging them back to the dusty shitholes where they belong. Here’s to me standing up and taking control of my passions once more. And more importantly, here’s to you my humble reader, for finding the courage to do the same.

The Writer & the Fighter

Sometimes this thing we call life can be a real fuck of a thing. We as humans can move from moments of pure elation to moments of sheer terror and uncertainty in an instant and our whole lives can turn on a dime. We travel through life as though we are racing towards something important; some kind of elusive goal that is always just out of our reach, and we rarely ever stop to live in the moment and realise just how lucky we are to be alive. By living in the moment I don’t mean going out dancing in a night club or curling next to your significant other underneath a blanket. Those things are great, don’t get me wrong. But I mean truly living in the moment and understanding just how wonderful it is to be who we are, where we are, and who we are with. Continue reading “The Writer & the Fighter”

Constellations – The de-motivational blog post of the year

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The picture placed in the header of this update serves as a very visual reminder of a dream conjured long ago by yours truly; a dream that I still one day hope to achieve. See when I first started writing, long before I begun to believe myself capable of seeing my work in print I ran through a rather impromptu goal setting session with myself surrounding my new found craft. During that session I asked myself how I would gauge my success as an author, and in my humbleness I came up with a few rather simple and very achievable measures of success. The first measure was modest. I would consider myself a successful author when I could sit in my own office, a space devoted entirely to my own creative processes and construct my tales of ruin and woe. I told myself that the walls of my office would be adorned with the workings of those who inspired me, and that perched on my desk would be a crisp white notepad, a lavish ballpoint pen, a laptop, and a lamp in the shape of the world.

My second measure of success would come when I could journey to the far corners of the earth, and find a spot just like the picture above where I could sit, surrounded by nothing but the vast emptiness of the wilderness and create and consume literature. My first incarnation of this dream saw me sitting on a jetty stretching over a lake in Alaska dressed in a hooded jumper, lost in my own thoughts as my pen scribbled frantically across a tattered notebook. But overtime there would be various incarnations of this dream; sometimes I was airlifted onto a windswept summit, sometimes I was in an African jungle surrounded by the very real possibility of death.

I’m sure that if I was to ask a mental health professional about my imaginings they would tell me that there is something very sinister and somewhat unnerving that my dreams almost always had me in total isolation, but fuck, we can’t all be socialites can we? The point is that at the time of writing I’m still yet to achieve either one of these rather simple benchmarks that I set for myself and the only person to blame for that is me.

A few days ago I was afforded the opportunity to attend what was called a future leaders motivational talk run by the company that I work for. It’s a seminar styled workshop that they run sporadically throughout the year for the up and comers like me to explore our minds and challenge our way of thinking and doing in the hopes of achieving personal development. Now although I’m usually captain sceptical when it comes to things like this I actually found the whole experience rather beneficial. Over the course of the day I learned a few techniques for goal setting and how to become a better leader in the workplace and beyond. And when I walked out the door at the end of the day I found myself questioning my whole take on this writing thing that I’m constantly chipping away at.

As I drove away from the seminar and returned to the workplace, and even as I lay in bed that night I began to understand that my whole approach towards becoming successful in this game was flawed. The publishing industry is a highly competitive and cut throat business where only the best manage to rise above the sludge piles of shit and have their works printed on a commercial basis. And from there only the elite manage to find any kind of notoriety for their works. Yet here I was trying to strike it rich by occasionally dipping my toes into the oceans of agents, publishers, and literary houses and wondering why the hell I wasn’t actually getting anywhere. When I started this blog I wrote in post number one that it was time to sink or swim, yet here I was twelve months later doing neither, instead I was merely bobbing along with some fucking floaties strapped to my arms to keep my head from going under.

But why was I doing this? Why was I holding myself back from fully immersing myself in something that I want so desperately? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that I was a little afraid to commit so completely to an ideal. Because I had only ever constructed a rough set of goals for myself with no logical plan of action to get me there, I was too afraid to fully commit to my craft. The possibilities of failure were endless when the goal was about as clear as a bucket full of mud.

Then there’s the second reason. I’ve never fully committed because until this moment I never really believed that I had to. For some fucked up reason I had this misguided sense of self-worth and entitlement that led me to believe that I didn’t have to give it my all; that I didn’t need to bust my arse chasing down agents and publishers, or pushing my wares onto unsuspecting audiences, because shit was just going to fall into place for me. But here’s the kicker: life isn’t like that. Right now I’m not worth shit in the literary community, and unless I get off my arse and start really striving towards my goals (that are now more clearly defined) than I’m never going to be worth more than that. We as a species have reached a rather strange point in our evolutionary progress, a point where the youth no longer believe in the value of hard work, but rather that they are special and deserve everything.

It’s a counterproductive mindset to fall into, and one that has had me spinning my wheels for a while now. We are told each and every day by our families, our friends, and our media outlets that we are deserving of all that life has to offer, and that makes us lazy. Why goal set and bust our arses to achieve what we are already told that we deserve? It’s toxic to our souls to be spoon fed such contrived notions, but we relish it and inevitably fall short of our true potential as a result. Michael Jordan didn’t become the best basket baller of all time by simply being told that he deserved to be. Steve Jobs didn’t revolutionise the technology world because his parents told him he was better than anyone else. No, these men worked themselves to the bone and poured their hearts and souls, their blood, sweat and tears into their respective fields and made themselves the best. And if I ever want to find success as a writer I need to be prepared to do the same.

The title of this post originated not because what I chose to write about was pessimistic or overtly negative, but rather because I want each of you to step away from it and question yourself, question those around you, and question every aspect of your lives and discover if you are where you truly want to be, or if you are falling short because you’re simply not working hard enough to accomplish your goals.

Right now I, like many others, am nothing more than tiny blip amongst the constellations of stars vying for a career as an author. I believed that I was better than the other stars and I got nowhere because I mistakenly assumed that my light was bright enough to capture the attention of audiences and draw them towards me. But the honest to God truth is that if I continue to believe that I deserve everything whilst contributing nothing than I will never achieve. But if I goal set and if I work my arse off and become the best damn author that I can be not only will I see my work put into print, but I’ll also be able to make time to journey to that lake and sit by the water with my hooded jumper, my notepad and pen, and stare up at the sky and know that I’ve achieved everything I ever set out to do.

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