“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
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Surfacing for air
As a writer I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. If I am going to sit down and flesh out my innermost thoughts for the world to see then I am going to devote my full attention to the task. Often times this means that I completely withdraw from the world and live within the confines of my own head for weeks at a time, barely registering what is taking place around me. I become so egocentric during these times that I often neglect those closest to me and even myself as I focus solely on the men and women that exist only in my mind’s eye. It’s a pretty shallow task to undertake, yet in my youthful arrogance I habitually chose this path of total isolation in my quest to create something of worth.
Yet despite my acknowledgement of my processes I regularly find myself disorientated and confused when I am eventually roused from my state of comatose and returned to the land of the living. Relationships that once prospered are now fractured and require urgent attention, my image has dwindled away to the point where I look like a homeless person, and the house looks like a bomb hit it. I find myself left asking just when the fuck did everything veer off course and why didn’t my prose-fuelled brain notice that something was amiss? I guess the question that I really want to know is why because I choose to be a writer does isolation have to be a by-product?
Well, the truth is that it doesn’t. There’s hundreds of thousands of writers all over the globe that manage to indulge their creative tendencies and still maintain some semblance of normality. Yet here I am retreating into myself every time my creative urges flair. I guess a large part of my behaviour can be attributed back to the fact that I’m actually a pretty timid man. I’ve never been in a fight. I’ve never stood up in the face of great adversity. And If I’m being completely honest I’ve never really expressed myself in an external fashion until I decided to become a writer. Ever since I was a boy I have internalised my thoughts and feelings, pushing them to a place so deep that I must now undertake an expedition to my very soul just to fuel that flame to create.
But what does this all mean? Does it mean that if I want to write then I am destined to be a perpetual disappointment to those closest to me? Well, I sincerely hope not. But it does mean that from now on when I choose to slip into that creative mindset and delve beneath the surface of my own thoughts, I’ll have to make a conscious effort to surface for air a little more often.
Over the past few months I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my manuscript in preparation for my journey abroad. In that time I’ve distanced myself from just about everyone and forgone the pleasures of the real world to focus on the chaotic realities of the one that I have created. But now as the end is in sight and my work feels greater than ever I can take a little more time to surface and show those closest to me that I really do love them, and can’t thank them enough for constantly putting up with the frustrated, egotistical arse that I often am.
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The Slip
One of my greatest failings in life is my own unrealistic expectations of myself and the subsequent disappointments that result from them. It sounds rather macabre to say, and perhaps even a little cliché, but I am and always will be, my own greatest enemy. For as long as I can remember I have forever been my own greatest advocate and my own greatest critic, which has led me to develop a split personality of sorts. I, Chris Nicholas, am part arrogant egotist, part emotionally despondent pessimist. And although these two duelling personalities are startlingly incongruous to one another, I’ve somehow managed to allow both to prosper within the vessel of flesh and bone that is me.
Although I often try to convince the world otherwise, the truth is that I am an extremely emotionally volatile human being. Wildly unstable with morals and emotions that seem almost foreign in the world I live in, I often wear the façade of a measured man completely in control of his own universe. I parade myself around as a strong person driven by pride and morals, and I stupidly call myself a leader, believing that just because I can inspire others I should therefore do just that. But even though there are times when I feel in control, I will never truly be. I am forever destined to be that man who stands on the brink of insanity staring back at a world he both despises, yet longs to be a part of…. And for anyone who does decide to follow in my footsteps, well, there’s an old saying that says “If you let the blind lead the blind, you fall off the cliff at the same time.”
But wait, this isn’t like me at all… I’m usually stronger than this. All that negative bullshit that you’ve just read doesn’t resonate with everything this very blog stands for. I’m usually the proud egotist who knows that he is destined for greatness, so when the fuck did the despondent pessimist return and start running his God-damn mouth again?… I can’t really be sure. But I guess that’s the thing with depression. Sometimes things seem to be going great, you’re striving towards a higher purpose and feel like your life actually has some fucking direction for a change, then all of a sudden you slip and you realise that maybe the strong and determined version of you doesn’t actually exist. Maybe it’s just a cruel joke that the darker impulses of your mind play in order to make that slip into anger and frustration seem so much greater.
Right now I’m feeling down and out. I feel as though my mind and body are exhausted and that I’ve slipped and fallen into that dreaded crevice of misery once again. It’s hard to pinpoint just where I went wrong. But somewhere along my journey I’ve placed a foot on fragile ground and tumbled down into a fissure of self-loathing and bitter hatred of my fellow man. My mind is scattered and my heart ablaze, yet no matter how hard I try to pull my shit together and start my ascent towards the stronger man within me, something keeps holding me back. Something keeps telling me that if I truly want to rise again I first need to reach inside of myself and rip the despondent pessimist from within my soul and set him alight. If I truly want to overcome the arsehole within me I must watch him burn until there is nothing left but ashes and scorched bone. Only then can I traverse my way to the top of this crevice and leave all the self-doubt manifesting in my heart behind.
In fourteen weeks I will be on the other side of the world pitching my heart out in an effort to see my writings deemed worthy of publication. But before I go I first need to finalise my editing to ensure that my manuscript is all that it can be. To do that, I need to vanquish the defeatist in me. I need to slay the misery within and return to the strong, overly-confident man that has worked his arse off for this very opportunity. I need to open up the shutters of my mind’s eye and force the bats of despair out of hiding. I need to get my shit together. And I need to do it now. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time. I’ve let a lot of opportunities get away from me. But this time things will be different. This time the egotist will rise.
The Renegade Press 