Tag: Writing

World Eater Shares Life, Writing, and Why the World Isn’t Eating Him Anymore [Q&A]

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to catch up with Franki from Hamline University’s Lit Link for a conversation about life and writing.

It has been a little while since I had participated in a formalised interview, and I had forgotten just how much fun it is to really reflect on who I am, what I have achieved, and what it is that I want in my life.

If you have a few minutes to spare, you can read the interview in its entirety below.

hamlinelitlink's avatarHamline Lit Link

This is a Q&A with Chris Nicholas. Chris Nicholas is a twenty-eight-year-old author and blogger from Brisbane, Australia. With over a decade of writing experience, Chris won his first writing competition in 2011, appearing as the winner and panellist of the Heading Northing Young Writers Competition at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. Since the event, he has entered numerous competitions (with varying degrees of success), had works featured on websites throughout America and Europe, run a weblog, published his debut novel, and completed a manuscript for his sophomore release.

How did you first get into writing?

I started writing in my final year of high school. I was seventeen at the time and should have been studying for my final exams, but every time I sat down at my desk to study I would suddenly find myself absentmindedly creating character profiles, plot points and endless pages of horribly punctuated stories.

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In Bloom

Imagine that you are standing before a rose garden. In front of you a series of stems rise from the earth and reach towards the heavens above. Some are tall; some short.  Some are straighter than others, and a select few carry more thorns than the rest. Their petals are in various stages of bloom too. Whereas some are wrapped up tightly in sepals, others have opened and allowed their oils to warm in the sun, emitting a fragrance that smells divine.

Imagine kicking off your shoes and stepping into garden. If you have a partner, or a child, or just a friend that you wish to take with you, then grab their hand and ask them to follow. Feel the dirt between your toes, and the heavenly scent on your tastebuds as you carefully weave your way through the maze of stems and thorns. Now imagine finding the perfect rose; a flower so striking that you sink to your knees and stare at its beauty. Its blood red petals are fanned wide to soak up the sun; it’s tantalising scent is unlike anything you have ever smelled before.

To the left of this perfect rose is a smaller flower; not quite in bloom. To the right of it stands a withered flower with petals falling towards the soil below. As you shift your gaze from left to right, you can’t help but feel as though the perfect rose in the middle is made even more magical by the two surrounding it. It’s as though you’re seeing it at the pinnacle of its existence. Had you arrived a day earlier, it may have looked more like the flower to the left. Had you of arrived a day later, it may have begun to wilt and die.

Alright. Enough with the visuals. You’re probably wondering why I’m asking you to conjure up images of blood red roses and soil shifting between your toes. It’s a new year; the fifth in the history of this site, and the angry boy who started blogging is now a grown man with a deep love of analogies and flowers (one needs to only click back through previous posts to find countless images and references to roses, peonies, etc.), and for the first time in my life I feel as though I understand what it means to be in bloom.

Yep. You heard that right. The writer who has spent years calling himself a wolf and tearing apart anything in his wake just mixed things up and labelled himself as a flower. Confused? Well, I can explain. But first we need to go backwards so that we can then go forwards…

rose-garden

Every year between Christmas and New Year a group of friends and I return to our home town and host an annual cricket tournament. The event has been running for over a decade, with two teams of twenty men chosen based on the suburbs we lived in as children. In our younger years, the tournament was merely a way to bring together friends that had been separated by time, geography and walks of life. But nowadays both teams have lost members to mental illness and suicide, and the day is used as a means of touching base and talking openly about issues in our lives that we may never have been brave enough to discuss in our youth.

At the 2016 event, I found myself standing alone with a friend when he looked at me and asked me about a few of the darker days that I have faced in recent months. We talked openly for a while about loss, change, and what it is that we value in life. I told him that I had shed a lot of tears in previous months; but that I was happy, I just wished I hadn’t had to lose so much in order to find myself. When I finished speaking he smiled at me and said:

“I’m proud of you Chris. You’ve been through some shit. And a lot of your friends have worried about you over the years. But we love you. You’re family.  And it’s good to finally see you coming into yourself.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling my heart break at the realisation that I had been so lost in life that my friends had been concerned. “I guess that sometimes we just need to go through a little bit of shit before we can grow.”

In the days since the event I have replayed the conversation over inside my head on numerous occassions, casting a look back at the evolution of who I am, and the metamorphosis that has taken place inside of my heart and mind. As a boy I was fuelled by anger, a fear of death, and a deep jealousy of anyone who achieved more than I did. I wanted to pen a best seller and become the greatest writer of my generation so badly that I turned myself into a horribly bitter person in my quest to succeed. I worried my family, bared my fangs, said terrible things about others, and lost my own happiness and smile.

But as a man I have learned that just because someone else is achieving, it doesn’t mean that I can’t; or won’t. I have learned that anger and jealousy breed anxiety and depression, and that neither I, or anyone else is defined by their faults and failures. We are however, defined by our friends and family, and the impact that we have on the lives of those around us. Our successes are measured not through making a best sellers list, or through earning a million dollars. They’re measured through the smiles we leave on the faces of strangers and those we care about.

Sometimes we just need to go through a little bit of shit before we can grow…

And we grow at different rates. We bloom in different seasons. And some of us experience more shit in our lives than the people around us. But just because that perfect flower in the rose garden isn’t you today, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be you tomorrow. Life isn’t a race. No one is born as a rose in full bloom; and every flower is as unique as our fingerprints, or a snowflake. We grow in the dirt and we’re shaped by the unique realities and experiences of our lives as we reach towards the heavens above, making us perfectly imperfect and beautiful in our own idiosyncratic ways. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to anyone but ourselves, because no one else has experienced the world as we have.

Sometimes it can be easy to focus on the negatives in our lives. For me it would be easy to fall into my old thought patterns and to say that after a decade of writing I’m still not the best seller that I thought I would be. Or that I became so bitter that I drove away the love of my life and lost a publishing deal. But for every darker experience that I have lived through, feeling as though life was pushing me into the dirt, I have also had some amazing moments of sunshine. I published a book at the age of twenty-six; I fell in love with a beautiful woman who made me genuinely happy, and who I was ready to give my life to; and I still have a family that supports me, and loves me unconditionally. Together that combination of soil and sunlight, along with a little rain has allowed me to grow, and will continue to do so for as long as I live.

I am still waiting for my moment to come into bloom and flower into the best version of Chris Nicholas that I can possibly be. And even though I have been fortunate enough to watch so many people around me blossom, the time just hasn’t been right for me to do so just yet. But it will come. Each of us will eventually become the most beautiful flower in the rose garden; sometimes it just takes longer than we anticipate for us to bloom. But just because you aren’t that breathtakingly beautiful flower today, or just because you’re going through some shit; it doesn’t mean that you can’t, or won’t bloom brighter than ever tomorrow.

If you ever feel as though you’re not the person you thought you would be, or that life has pushed you down into the dirt. Just remember that you’re not alone; you’re with me, and millions of other people across the globe. Our time to be in bloom will come. And when yours arrives I promise that you will be breathtaking in your beauty, and that you will blossom into someone so incredible that your friends and family will fall in love with you all over again. Sometimes we just need to go through a little bit of shit before we can grow. And sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and remember that one day we will blossom. One day it’ll be our turn to be in bloom.

Worth Fighting For…

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

  • James ‘Buddy’ Nielsen

I have always viewed each post on this site as a chapter in my life. Once a piece is written and published, I move on to the next, making a conscious effort not to look back at the works that I have already completed. But over the past five months I have been moving through a period of introspection, confronting myself with the darker aspects of my personality, and forcing myself to read through the chapters of my life that I have transcribed and shared with the world.

During my readings, I stumbled across a post called Bellicose; a piece in which I likened my own life and creative evolution to boxing. At the time, I thought that I had been through some shit; I believed that life had knocked me down and that I had learned what it took to get back up. But I was wrong. I had never even stepped into the goddamn ring. I was just a mouthy boy who thought that revelling in pain would ultimately make me a stronger man. I was forcing myself to be bitter and angry for the sake of art, and in doing so I altered my reality by opening my heart to hate and shutting out the opinions, thoughts and feelings of others.

But a few months ago, life really did knock me out. In the space of a month I split from the woman I want to marry, and learned that the sophomore novel I had spent over a year creating would no longer be put into print via the publishing house that produced Midas. At the time, I was a mess. I have never felt as low as a did when my lover walked out on me; I cried myself to sleep for weeks, and felt a pain inside of my chest that hurt worse than anything I had ever felt.

Losing my lover was a right hook that blurred my vision and saw my knees buckle; losing the publishing deal was the left jab that sent me crashing to the floor where I lay dazed and confused, staring at the ceiling wondering how the hell my entire world had just fallen apart.

At first the answers to the questions I asked of myself were difficult to come by. Self-analysis can be a horribly confronting experience, and something had broken inside of me. But as I lay motionless on the floor of my bedroom staring at the ceiling through teary eyes, I began to realise that despite spending years forcing myself to feel pain, I had never allowed myself the opportunity to learn from my experiences. I was still the same emotionally fragile boy that began writing in his room at the age of seventeen, I was just hiding behind a moniker of a wolf because I was afraid of becoming the man that I should have always been.

I used anger to shield myself from the world, and in doing so I lost the most important person in mine. When she left, my heart fractured into a million pieces and I fell harder than I ever thought possible. But I eventually picked myself up off the floor, stared at my reflection in the mirror, opened my heart and mind, and allowed myself to learn from the pain of loss. When I did so I realised that for 27 years I had ignored my own wellbeing and left my soul to wander on its own in search of fulfilment while filling my head with anger, angst and bullshit.

Alright. Let’s take a quick interlude and allow the self-pity that seems to be bubbling to the surface to fade. Because this post isn’t about me. It’s about you, and the people around you; and it’s about a metamorphosis of the mind that will prevent you from feeling the pain that I had to endure in order to discover who I really am. When my lover left me, my heart wasn’t the only thing that broke; my ego did too, and while the first hurts like hell, the liberation that has come from losing the later has changed my life.

This post is about not allowing your soul to wander searching for fulfilment. It’s about taking a moment to slow down and ask yourself what it is that your soul is yearning for, what your heart desires, and what your dreams in their purest forms consist of. This post is a means of saying that only fools wait until life knocks them flat on their back to realise what it is that truly matters to them.

For me personally, my soul has wandered for 27 years in search of happiness. Sadly, that happiness has always been right in front of me; I was just too caught up in my own self-loathing to see it. But after losing everything and having to rise to my feet once again, I can say that from this moment forward there are only three things in this world that matter to me; and I vow to never allow my soul to wander in search of them again. Those three things are my happiness, my family, and the woman who taught me what it means to fall hopelessly in love.

Expressing gratitude for the first two is simple. Happiness is a choice; life is a gift that should be celebrated every goddamn day, and even the darker moments that we experience are opportunities to grow. If I hadn’t of hit rock bottom, I might never have learned what it is to be a man, or how to pick myself up off the ground when life knocked me down.

My family have stood by me and loved me since the day I was born, and now that I’m becoming a man, I can be there to help them when they fall, just as they have with me. I’m making a conscious effort to show them that I love them at every opportunity, because as wonderful as life is, it can change in a heartbeat, and I don’t want to them to ever doubt that I care.

And then there’s the girl… I don’t know if I’ll get my happily ever after with her. I probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t love her unconditionally and cherish the wonderful moments that we spent together. I gave my heart to my her the very first time that we met, and it’s hers to keep until we both grow old and wrinkly. I would love to become her husband one day, and be the man who cares for her when she is sick, holds her hand, or kisses her head while she falls asleep. But even if I never get the opportunity to be that man, I know that a small piece of our souls will be intertwined for the rest of our lives.

OK. Here we go… Here comes the part that’s all about you and those you care about. I’ve shared my vulnerability with the world, and now it’s your turn to do the same. 

Are you ready?

Every holiday season people across the globe usher in the new year by creating resolutions: promises to themselves and their friends to focus on self-improvement in some small way. But those resolutions are quickly forgotten as the reality of our daily lives makes us forget what it is that we are trying to improve within ourselves. So, this year I want you to try something different. I want you to abandon the notion of a resolution, and make a promise to yourself, and to your loved ones instead. Promise that you will no longer allow your soul to wander in search of whatever it is that it yearns for. It doesn’t matter whether you are searching for a partner, a career, a family, an experience, or just to rediscover the smile that you’ve misplaced. Promise yourself, and those around you that you’ll discover what it is that makes your heart beat, and your soul complete, and chase it down with everything that you have got.

At the bottom of this post you’ll find an image that I urge you to take and share with the people you care about. Complete the sentence and tell them what it is that your soul desires. Open your heart and tell them what matters to you, and share your aspirations with them. And then ask them to share their hopes and dreams with you. Help each other strive towards your dreams and become the change you wish to see in the world. Don’t waste another holiday season creating a resolution that fades; create a conversation and a goal to make your dreams your reality instead.

And if you are someone who has been knocked down by life, and haven’t figured out how to get back up; consider this post a helping hand reaching out to you. Get up off the floor and figure out what your soul is searching to find, and then start building a life that is worth fighting for.

Life is a beautiful gift. Celebrate it, and cherish every single day.

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Mirrors

“A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”

-Elizabeth Gilbert

I used to believe that I was a man who had been blessed with the gift of intellect. I spent years convinced that I was the smartest person in any room; often closing myself off from the opinions of others. I would gnash my teeth at the slightest hint of conflict, and reveled in my ability to push my own agendas onto others, whilst belittling theirs. Yet while I thought that I was a magnificent mind perpetually on the cusp of achieving great things, the truth is that I was a bit of a dick. I bruised egos, hurt feelings, and let down the people closest to me.

During these volatile years, I was tolerable at best, and a horribly bitter person at my worst. I convinced myself that I was the most important individual in the world, and I forced myself to suffer through a fear of death, anxiety and self-loathing because I believed I would become a stronger writer and a better man through doing so. I repeatedly told myself that I deserved everything, and that the people around me, who had never walked through the hells that I had, deserved nothing.

I was so angry at everything, and everyone. And I was so afraid of asking myself why that I never confronted the bitterness festering inside of me. I was afraid of death, and petrified of failing. I didn’t have a place in the world; I merely existed in my own reality of anger and unjustified resentment. So, while I pushed myself as hard as I could to chase my dreams of becoming an author, I tore other people apart so that I wasn’t the only one hurting.

I was so lost in my own sickening reality that not even the girl of my dreams was spared from my bitterness. There were times when I was so proud of who she was, and all I wanted to do was tell her I loved her; but when I opened my mouth all the wrong words came tumbling out. I broke her heart. And eventually she broke mine back; walking out of my life and forcing me to look introspectively at the monster that I had become.

When she left, I realized that I wasn’t a man of intellect after all; nor was I ever the smartest person in any room. In fact, it turns out that I’m the furthest thing from intelligent, because I knew that she was my soulmate from the very first time that I saw her; and yet I was so goddamn stupid that I pushed her way.  Blinded by my own illogical quest to make her love me, I could never see that she already did, and that she spent our entire relationship holding my hand and asking me to stare into the mirror of her soul so that I could see and become the man that she saw hidden inside of me.

She could see the man that was buried beneath the anger and loathing; the man that still loves her unconditionally, and with such intensity that a smile still spreads across his face at the faintest thought of her.

mirrors

She is the first person who ever made me realise that I am not as intelligent as they are, and the only person in this world that I would give up everything I have just to spend one more day with. She is the woman that I want to travel the world, create beautiful memories, and grow old and wrinkly with. But because I was too afraid to look into the mirror that she held before me, I’m no longer the man who gets to tell her how much he loves her when she succeeds; or kiss her forehead and tell her everything will be alright when she is feeling down.

Agh. Alright. Let’s take a break for a moment. Because this is starting to sound a little depressing and my eyes filling with tears. This isn’t supposed to be a post about sadness or loss. It’s supposed to something positive. I fucked up. I fucked up really badly and I lost the woman I want to spend my life with. But one man’s loss can be another’s gain, and the whole point of writing this is so that people can learn from my mistakes. 

It took losing everything that I have ever wanted to finally become a man capable of looking at himself in the mirror. I had to give my heart away to a woman who left before I could find the strength to acknowledge my fractures and flaws. But by learning how to be open with myself I have come to realise that while I spent years believing that I had overcome depression and was healthy; the truth is that I was on a downward spiral of poor mental health caused by my own incessant desires to become the greatest author of all time, to make my partner proud, and to bury my own heartache regarding issues such as the death of friends and my crippling fear of being unable to provide a beautiful life for the girl of my dreams.

I had to pay a terrible price to find the courage to confront myself, but by facing my own reflection I have learned how to lay to rest the demons of my past, and how to be happy. Shit, I’m even starting to love the man that I see staring back at me with grin spread across his face, making me wish that I had of found the nerve to face my own demons years ago, rather than waiting until I lost my soulmate to do so. Because as great as it feels to be staring at the man that I should have always been, there’s still an element of heartbreak in seeing your reflection in a mirror that was once held by your soulmate, but now sits dusty and alone in the corner of a room you once shared together.

Since finding myself I have just one regret left in my life; and that is that I can’t go back in time and start over with my former lover. I can’t take back all my screw ups and my flaws and sweep her off her feet. If I could, I wouldn’t be the angry, bitter man that I was. I would be the version of me that I have become since she left; the man that she always saw hidden beneath a veneer of angst. And instead of saying all the wrong things I would simply say this:

Hi. My name is Chris Nicholas. And you don’t know it just yet; but I fell in love with you from the moment that I saw you. And if you give me a chance I promise that I will spend my life doing everything that I can to make you smile. If you want me… I am yours now and forever; because you have stolen my heart, and I hope to God that you hold onto it for the rest of our lives.

But I can’t go back in time, and I can’t tell her just how much I miss her. There are so many wonderful moments happening in my life every single day that I wish I could share with her, but I can’t. Nor can I share in the great moments happening in her life either. And while that breaks my heart, I can say this to my readers: find your soulmate; hold their hand, and stare into the mirrors of each other’s souls so that together you can change your lives.

If you have already found that person, give them a hug and a kiss and tell them that you love them dearly every single day. Let them know that they mean the world to you, because no matter your circumstance; the cost of love is priceless and there is no greater feeling in this world than being told that you are loved, and that you are beautiful. Just as there is nothing more wonderful, or fulfilling than finding that one person who you value, and adore more than anything else in the world.

Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait until you have lost the woman (or man) of your dreams to become the person you should have always been. Find your soulmate and stare into their mirror and become the very best version of you; then take their hand and make one hell of a life, jam-packed with wonderful memories together.

To the woman with the little blue hearts… If you ever read this: I miss you. More than you’ll ever know. I’m nothing without you.

The Woman With The Little Blue Hearts

I never really thought that I would understand what it felt like to be happy. When I first started blogging I was a broken man who believed that my time on this earth would be spent wallowing in self-pity as I created manuscripts riddled with despair. But two years ago everything changed. I met you. And you became the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are the love of my life: the person that I would fall onto my own sword a thousand times over to protect. You are the woman with the matching little blue hearts tattooed on her ankles; a soul of beauty, compassion and intellect that leaves me weak at the knees.

When we met I was fractured; a horrible man hell bent on his own self-destruction. But from the very first time I placed my hands on your hips and watched as you smiled at me and tucked your hair behind your ears, I knew that you had stolen my heart. I should never have treated you so poorly. I should never have brought tears to your eyes.  I was a fool, but you helped me to become a man. You have always been so patient with me; even when I fucked things up over and over again.

I can never repay you for the kindness that you have given me. You have stood by me through the passing of friends, the chasing of dreams, and those horrible months when I thought that I was dying.  People often say that in their darkest days their loved ones walk beside them. But you never have. In my lowest moments you have carried me; you have been the blood that courses through my veins, and the sun that lights up my world.

You have suffered in silence for so long while I searched for happiness in all the wrong places, and for that I am sorry. I thought that becoming a literary superstar, or landing a new job would make me feel complete. But everything that I have ever needed has been right in front of me since the very first day we met. All I have ever needed is you: the woman with the little blue hearts tattooed on her ankles. You complete me. You make me smile, and you are the most important thing in my world. I would give up everything that I have, throw away my successes, and lay down my pen, just to hold your hand, kiss your lips, and hear you say that you love me.

I want to grow old with you. I want to become your fiancé, your husband, and eventually the father of your children. I want to watch as those little blue hearts fade over time as our years together pass. I want to devote my life to you, and spend the next eighty years repaying you for all the love and kindness that you have given me. I want to kiss you before you roll over and drift off into slumber, or hear you tell me that I chew too loud, or that my clothes don’t match, or that I need to start cleaning up after myself.

I want to give to you the happiness that you have given me. I’m tired of being a wolf. I’m weary of being an eater of worlds. I want to be the apple of your eye, and the man who stands proudly beside you while you achieve your dreams.

But talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. I have told you all of this before. So let me sink to my knees, or fall on my sword and swallow my pride. Let me show you that I want to be yours. Let me prove to you that for the rest of my life, I want to be the man hopelessly in love with the woman with the little blue hearts tattooed on her ankles.

Remembered for Something

“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.”

-Terence McKenna

It’s no secret that I have been struggling to write lately. Over the past few months the aggressive creativity that usually floods my mind has dissipated and become more of a slow leak than a torrent. Despite my absence of inspiration I have persevered as best as I can, producing a handful of blog entries, and fleshing out the admittedly shaky blueprints for two separate novels. At first I thought that this writer’s block was stemming from a sense of nostalgia as I finalised one manuscript and began to transition into the next. But it turns out that I was wrong. My inability to write had nothing to do with nostalgia; I have been suffering from writer’s block because at some point in the editing process of War I lost sight of who I was, and why I was writing in the first place.

It happened far easier than it should have too. See, I have always had this theory that there are two types of people in this world. There are those who want to be famous for nothing; and those who want to be remembered for something. Despite devoting my life, and my career to becoming the later, I have increasingly found myself slipping into the idiotic mindset of longing to be renowned and celebrated for what I do.

The humbleness that keeps this wolf grounded vanished, only to be replaced with an insatiable desire to fuel my own self worth. I sold out and became a fucking fake who was more concerned with the idea of being famous than being true to who I really am.  

When I finished the first draft of my sophomore novel I sat back in my chair and looked at the rough outline of a manuscript that I had created and found myself setting benchmarks to achieve. I knew that I had created a story that left my original novel Midas for dead. I had taken my protagonist and dragged him through hell; crafting scenes that I as a consumer of literature would love to read. So I set myself a goal: I wanted this novel to outsell the first. I wanted to improve upon my first efforts as a published author and continue to establish myself within the creative industries.

The plan was solid. But my ego allowed my creative mind to manipulate my aspirations and turn them into something horrible. Within days my benchmark wasn’t merely to outdo myself; it was to outdo everyone. My humble desire to grow as a man became an urge to look down upon others from a throne of literary success. I didn’t give a shit about whether or not people enjoyed reading my novel. My only concern was that they paid for a copy and I became illustrious in my success. And in that shift of mindsets from seeking personal achievement and remembrance from my peers, to desiring fame for the purpose of fame, I created a contradiction within my own microcosm that fractured everything that I stood for as a writer and killed my creativity.

When I started blogging the idea of securing an audience as large as I have been fortunate enough to amass had never even crossed my mind. I wrote to clear my head, to fight my demons, and to try and leave the world in a better state than when I found it. And yet just four years later my minor successes had momentarily gone to my head. Armed with a freshly produced manuscript and a head full of outlandish thoughts, I started reaching out to some of the largest public relations agencies in the country requesting professional representations for my talents.

The first two companies shot me down quickly, delivering generic rejection letters and emphatically stating that they do not review their original decisions. But a representative from the third agency provided me with a much needed reality check, composing an email that read:

“You need to realise that you’re an indie author. You’re not writing to sell products or to find fame. You’re writing because you have a story that you want to tell. Unfortunately it is because of this that it doesn’t matter how well you write; to an agency like mine, you have no marketability as a writer ”

The words hit me like a fist in the pit of the stomach, causing me to gasp in horror at what I had just read. I had spent months creatively frustrated as I pursued this bullshit concept of notoriety and fame. And then this stranger took one look at my work and found the contradiction inside of me that was causing my intellectual exacerbation and clouding my judgement. I have become so used to calling myself a world eater and a wolf that I temporarily lost the ability to know when my desire to write was causing me to bare my fangs and pursue goals that ran incongruously to who I really am.

Thanks to the brutally honest words of a stranger I now realise just how easily I could have identified the place inside of my head where the inconsistencies in my rational were flowing together and causing me pain. If I had stopped focusing on chartering oceans swelling with my own delusions of grandeur, or examining the heart of my writing, I could have looked introspectively inward and found where the contradictions of who I am, and my foolish desire to be famous for nothing were causing my artistic blockage.

Today is the first time in months that I have sat down at my laptop and felt like me again. I haven’t continued blogging at The Renegade Press for the past four years because of a yearning to be revered. I have done so because I have fallen in love with sharing myself with the world and touching the lives of strangers; however briefly that may be. I blog because I would rather be remembered for something than famous for nothing.

The next time that I lose sight of who I am, I will remember to take a look inside of myself and remove the contradictions causing me pain, so that my creativity can flow once again.

Memento Vivere – Memento Mori

Agh. I hate myself for doing it. Opening a post with a title written in Latin makes me feel like such a fraud. This isn’t ancient Rome, and the fact that I write from my heart, rather than my head means that I can hardly be considered to be a scholar. So to use an adage as historically significant as I have in a vain attempt to pass myself off as some kind of well-versed academic just feels wrong. And yet I did it anyway. I chose a title written in a dialect that I will never fully understand and tried to claim it as my own. Memento vivere – Memento mori.

Remember to live. Remember to die.

Lately it feels as though I’m dying. At least from a creative standpoint anyway. I have been plagued by a writer’s block so nauseating that I haven’t actually written anything for weeks. Instead I have been opening up my laptop, or staring at a blank page in one of my many notebooks and wondering where the hell my creative impulses went.

When I finished writing my sophomore novel War, I was on a high and ready to take over the literary industry by force.  Yet at some point during the editing process I lost all confidence in my ability to create and fell into a frustrating void of nothingness where it became impossible to find my creative spark. It may not seem like much to some, but it is a pretty serious issue for a writer who defines himself as being aggressively creative to suddenly suffer from an affliction that leaves you devoid of the inspiration to write. If I take away the creative, I’m just aggressive.

Writing is my passion. It’s something that I have spent a decade struggling and striving for, living and dying by my work. During that time I have experienced success: winning competitions, curating my own website, and publishing a novel. But I also know better than most what it feels like to fail. Throughout my writing life I have been overlooked for more opportunities than I can even remember. In my formative years I was repeatedly told that I wasn’t talented enough to make it as an author; nowadays I’m continuously told that that my style isn’t palatable by industry insiders and other authors. Hell, just last week I was told that I’m not marketable as an individual, and that I fail in comparison to others because of this.

While it hurts to admit, these failures have taken their toll. There have been moments where I have suffered a crisis of confidence so grand that I have given up and walked away from my dreams. I have cried in wardrobes, set fire to manuscripts and called people horrendous names while struggling through spates of depression. At times I have I felt so emotionally shattered due to circumstances beyond my control that it has been a struggle just to crawl out of bed and face another day of feeling like I wasn’t good enough. But every single time that I have failed and fallen, I have eventually picked myself up, dusted myself off, and set out to achieve my dreams all over again.

I have always assumed that I had been blessed with an iron will. I’ve spent years believing that there was something remarkable about me that allowed me to keep striving forwards even when I felt completely hopeless. But the truth is that  I’m no different to anyone else. My ‘unwavering desire to succeed’ was merely a by-product of my life moving through a series of ebbs and flows as it unconsciously followed an idiom uttered by Roman servants to remind generals that they were fallible. Memento Vivere: Remember to live. Memento Mori: remember to die.

What that means is that for every single moment of triumph in my life, there will also be a moment of great pain. Last year I received news that a health scare that had me contemplating my own morality wasn’t as serious as I originally believed, only to discover a few months later that a close friend had taken his own life. I have seen my debut novel released, and have had my writing featured on websites run by literary geniuses; only to suddenly suffer from a lack of creativity so stifling that it feels as though there is a weight is pushing down on my chest.

These transitions from success and elation to inevitable heartbreak and failure are cycles of life and death that are occurring within my own existence. I’m not referring to death in the physical sense; I haven’t met my maker just yet. But death in the sense that opportunities, circumstances and relationships come to their natural, or sometimes premature endpoint, so that I can progress onwards to the next.

At first this can be hard to accept. I’m yet to meet a man or woman who enjoys seeing their relationships falter, or who finds solace in watching circumstances and opportunities that they have fought valiantly towards fail. But these deaths are quite possibly the most integral component of the human existence. Without them, how could we ever know the wondrous ecstasy of life and success when we experience them?

It seems ridiculous that it has taken me a decade of moving through these periods of life and death within my creativity before I actually realised the importance of suffering from writer’s block and creative lapses. Without them I would never know just how amazing it is to be blessed with the ability to write in the first place. Unfortunately, I have spent the past few weeks mentally and emotionally beating the shit out of myself for not being able to create anything; when in hindsight I should have used that time to allow the journey that was writing War to come to its natural point of closure, so that the next stage of my writing career could come to fruition.

But angst and self-regret caused by retrospection is the curse of the damned. There’s no point beating myself up all over again for failing to recognise an opportunity to reflect and refocus. All I can do is move forward from here and learn to remember to live, and to die spectacularly at whatever it is that I do.

As for the industry insiders that have told me that my style of writing isn’t palatable, or that I’m not talented, or marketable enough to make it as an author… Their words may have shaken my confidence and caused me to doubt myself at times, but I’m ultimately stronger having lived through their criticisms. At twenty-seven years of age I have a published novel and a successful website which is frequented by some of the most remarkable and passionate people that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I have friends and family who are proud of the man that I am, and I’ve beaten depression and found happiness in myself.

My writing might not necessarily be palatable to some; but I’m not only talented, and marketable; I’m a fucking juggernaut too.

Roads

Contrary to what some readers may believe, I am a man who at times can be crippled by self-doubts. It may sound strange to hear that a writer who refers to himself as a wolf and world-eater can be emotionally fragile, but it’s easy to portray confidence when manipulation of the written word is your craft. The truth is that I’m my own harshest critic, and often find myself writing from a place of pain or discontent rather than happiness. I question myself, my decisions and my talents every single day. I ask if I am the writer and man that I long to be, and what I have to do in order to become that person. I deconstruct myself and my works over and over, constantly pushing myself to become more, and to give more of myself to my dreams and to others.

But living your life this way is foolish. When you continuously deconstruct and scrutinize every aspect of your life you either end up accomplishing nothing, or sending yourself insane. For me personally, I feel as though I’ve been spinning my wheels as of late. After finalising the editing process of my sophomore novel ‘War’ two weeks ago, I’ve struggled to find the creative drive that usually consumes me.

I’m not really surprised to find myself feeling stifled. It’s a bitter-sweet feeling to complete a manuscript that has taken almost eighteen months to create. And it’s a scary thought to think that I’ll now have to open up a blank document on my computer and start penning my way through an entirely new piece of work. And yet, I know that once I do, the creative urges that are currently escaping me will come flooding back in waves.

When I find myself stuck in a slump like this I am notorious for being abrasive and difficult to be around. I internalize conversations with myself, picking apart my life more vigorously than I already do. My self-doubts can cloud my judgement, and leave me feeling crippled with anxiety and the fear that I’m not good enough to start over again with a new creative endeavour. And yet, it’s often when I reach this point of frustration and defeated self-loathing that I find the inspiration to create once again.

…Which is exactly what happened when I found myself staring at the road.

People often tell me that the path or road that I choose to travel ultimately defines who I am. The proverb usually comes as a result of a conversation in which I try to define what it feels like to constantly be treading the fine line between being fulfilled, and feeling inadequate in one’s accomplishments. So while I know that my friends and family aren’t referring to a roadway in a literal sense (I’m not going to become a new man by taking a different route to the grocery store), the comment leaves me frustrated and often creates a point of contention between us.

Road

But as I recently sat inside a café and stared down at the roadway outside, an idea settled into the back of my mind and made me realize that maybe there is more adage than I had previously realized. The thought went like this:

At some point, every single road within the country is connected. You can choose the wrong route and find yourself lost, or at a dead-end. But with the right direction, you could end up anywhere you wanted.

In a purely physical sense, if I was to walk out onto the roadway right now and stand on the two unbroken yellow or white lines that mark the centre, I could theoretically begin a journey that took me to just about any location within the country. In a psychological sense, if I were to close my eyes and envision those same two lines as my starting point, I could embark upon a journey within myself that is limited only by my own imagination and the routes that I decide to take.

It sounds like the plot for terrible children’s movie doesn’t it? The man whose imagination allows him to follow the roads he creates within his head; all his dreams are connected and within reach. He can be anything or anyone he wants to be… If he follows the correct route.

And yet this is essentially how we all live our lives. Inside of our heads we are constantly exploring the roads of life, making decisions that have the potential to alter our psychological location just as much as our physical one. As children we walk alongside our parents and guardians, holding their hands as we take our first delicate steps and begin to map the contours and gradients of our own life maps. With their help we learn the rules of the roads of life, and understand that poor decisions can lead you down alleys and laneways of frustration, angst, heartbreak or regret.

Then as we grow older and our carers release us from their grasp, we begin to forge our own paths. We follow highways of conventional thinking, and explore side streets and back alleys that are traversed only by minds inspired to do so. We become lost, and are forced to trace our steps backwards until we become found again. And we find others to explore the land with, forming relationships that allow us to experience love and companionship.

But we can’t wander forever. There are moments when we need to stop and assess where we are on our maps, or to appreciate the beauty of the roads that we are choosing to walk upon; or maybe even to admit that we are a little lost. There is no harm in standing still. There is no problem with arriving at a fork, or a T-intersection and taking the time to understand where each decision will lead us. When I feel as though I am spinning my wheels, or I begin to over examine my talents and desires, I shouldn’t beat myself up. This is just my mind’s way of saying that it needs a moment to refocus, and see where I am verses where I want to be.

So while I may have had a couple of slow weeks creatively, my mind has consulted the map of where I am and where I want to be, and I’m ready to start following those unbroken yellow or white lines inside my head once again. I might take some detours, or end up off course, but eventually I’ll reconnect with the writer that I want to be and we’ll start creating a new story together. Until then, I’ll appreciate that no matter where I am physically or emotionally, the road beneath my feet has the ability to connect me to wherever it is that I choose to go.

Philocaly

You once told me that every single man, woman, and child lives in their own unique version of reality. You said that the way in which we interpret the world around us creates a realism that is uniquely ours. It cannot be replicated, nor shared. These idiosyncrasies of the heart and mind shape our thoughts and feelings, defining who we are. I cannot see the world through the eyes of another. I can never witness the beauty of an unfurling rose, or observe the elegance of a constellation of stars as they do. I cannot feel what they feel, love what they love, or loathe the things that they have learned to despise.

Nor would I ever want to.

For in my reality you are beautiful, and you are perfect. In my reality I could never imagine loving anyone like I love you. I have tried so many times to immortalize you in my words, spending hours trying to capture your beauty through prose. I have laboriously crafted allegories and odes written just for you, but nothing I do ever seems good enough.  How could I ever do you justice? How could the words of a man ever encapsulate your magnificence and splendor? Every time I try to write for you I conjure images of unrestrained inhibitions and lust. But my love for you runs so much deeper than flesh.

My love for you is a love of beauty; the affliction of philocaly.

I place my hand upon your cheek and feel myself becoming lost in your eyes. You are the universe; the constellation of stars that guide my heart. I am the intrepid traveler enamoured with the endlessness of your grace. No man could ever love you as much as I do. I have pined for you for so long, and yet my hunger for you has not wearied with time. With each passing embrace my hands have grown more adept at holding you, and our souls have become intertwined.

Your body has always been a curvaceous landscape that I have longed to explore. I crave your sensuality now more than I ever have before. But where my hands once trembled with excitement as I fumbled and fondled, I have learned how to kiss and tease, until exhilaration causes your skin to prickle and turn to goose bumps. I have learned how to place my hands upon your hips, and to interlock my fingers with yours as I hold them above your head. I have studied the faintness with which your breath catches in your throat as euphoria floods through you in waves.

I want to hold you, and make love to you. I want to feel your breath against my skin as you press your lips against my neck and whisper my name. I want to uncover your innermost thoughts, and take away all of your pains.  I long to feel my fingertips trace faint lines against your hips.  Let me confide in you; let me jettison all of my insecurity and fear into the cosmos until there is nothing left but you and I. Let me feel your heart beat as you writhe beneath my sheets. I want to fulfil your desires and become your reason to breathe.

In my reality you are beautiful, and you are perfect. I am a man awestruck my philocaly. You are the woman that I desire: the one who I have chosen to give my heart, and my body to for all of eternity. Do with them as you please.

 

The Construct of Time

Time is just an agreed upon construct. We have taken distance (one rotation of the earth, and one orbit of the sun) divided it up into segments, then given those segments labels.

-Author Unknown

Before man decided to differentiate between the periods when the sun had risen, and when the moon had taken its place, there was no such thing as time. Before days, hours, and minutes ever existed there were merely rotations of the earth that brought about phases of light, and periods of darkness. But our quest for intellectual enlightenment, coupled with human curiosity urged mankind to quantify and label the earth’s rotations.

Early Egyptians divided the day into two twelve hour periods, erecting huge obelisks that rose into the sky, allowing them to use shadows to track the sun’s movements. The Greeks and Persians used water clocks called clepsydra. And Plato even went as far as to develop one of the first alarm clocks utilising water, lead balls, and a columnar vat. This creation of the clock bought with it acceptance of time and structure. The periods of light and darkness were broken down into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

Nowadays we have wrist watches, stereos, smartphones, and numerous other devices that act as clocks. We live according to the sexagesimal numerical system established by ancient Sumerians; measuring our lives down to the nearest second, believing that time is one of the most precious commodities that one can amass.

I for one, constantly tell myself that I need more time. I convince myself that if I could just find extra hours in the day I could write more, or make a better effort to see my friends and family, or be healthier. On the surface these grievances with my insufficiency of time seem justified. I’m a busy man. I work, I run a website, I write novels, and attend university. On top of that I have to maintain my health and fitness, spend time with my partner, and so on.

But those grievances are nothing more than excuses. Time is a creation of man. It isn’t, nor was it ever intended to be our ruler.

I recently attended a seminar where the lecturer stated that within every adult is a child, and in the heart of that child lays an unanswered question, or questions. They are the compulsions that drive us, the insecurities that cause us to lose sleep at night, and the reason we hide behind excuses like time. These questions claw at our subconscious during moments of high tension and cause the fragility of our ego to rear its ugly head. We ask ourselves about our own importance, or question our safety, or query the significance of our very existence.

steampunk-eye1

But because our minds are not programed to interpret and quantify such harrowing questions, their manifestation is interpreted by our brains as fear. We fear failure, embarrassment, uncertainty, success, and a million other things. But our ego prevents us from acknowledging that we are insecure, vulnerable, and afraid. While we wish that we could tell ourselves and others that we are struggling, we refuse to accept our own weaknesses. We blame our failure to launch, or our refusal to extend ourselves beyond our reach on bullshit excuses like time.

When you cast some objectivity on our willingness to limit our own potentials and refusal to acknowledge the unanswered questions of our innermost self, it seems ludicrous that we so often choose to hide behind a construct that started with obelisks and clepsydras. And yet, people do it every day. I do it every day. I tell myself that I am too busy to relax with my partner, or to see friends, or that I don’t have enough time to stop and enjoy life.

At times this foolish notion that I can’t squeeze anything more into my days leaves me frustrated and ashamed. I look at the lives of others who are spending their time with family, or writers that don’t need to work as hard as I do to survive and it makes me bitter. I have been known to cuss out strangers before, believing that their lives are easier than mine, because they have more time than I do. But the truth is that they don’t. It is illogical to think that these strangers have somehow found a way to defy science and create more hours in their day than I have in mine.

The reason that I look at these people who have seemingly made it in comparison to me with such loathing, is that despite all of my successes as a writer and a man, I’m still petrified of failure. I have devoted years to writing manuscripts and blogs, and at times it has felt as though I am on the verge of creating a career through literature. Yet I’ve never quite managed to become the massive success that every artist dreams of becoming.

My unanswered question forces me to continuously ask if I am good enough, and how it would feel to fail. When panic and self-doubt starts clawing at my subconscious and undermining my confidence, I play the time card. I tell myself that I am too busy to fully embrace my dreams and become the man I have always dreamed of becoming.

The truth is that at age 27, time is still my friend. I have already come a long way from the emotionally fragile man that created this weblog four years ago. When I started blogging I had a list of unanswered questions and insecurities a mile long, but through writing I have managed to discover the answers to many of them. I’m no longer afraid of accepting my vulnerabilities, nor am I afraid of exposing heart and mind to the world. There are posts on this website that I wrote with a smile on my face, and there are many that I wrote with tears running down my cheeks.

Nowadays my list of unanswered questions has been whittled down to the two entries mentioned above. I ask myself am I good enough to be positioned alongside the literary elite? And am I willing to strive so hard for my dreams that I am prepared to risk spectacular failure? When these questions cause me to doubt myself I still tend to shield myself from heartache by saying that my busy schedule and lack of time is holding me back.

But using time as a means to avoid your unanswered questions will ultimately leave you feeling unfulfilled. The construct born through the creation of obelisks and clepsydras should never stop anyone from achieving their dreams. For me personally, when I hear myself use this act of deference to protect myself I need to be conscious of what is really causing me pain. Am I really complaining about a lack of hours in the day? Or do I need to dig a little deeper and confront the fear of failure that is really holding me back?

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