"Get busy living or get busy dying".
Tim Robbins' character in Shawshank Redemption says this line and while I don't live in constant fear of being stabbed to death in a prison shower, I am in dire need of an escape from something. Apathy and fear mostly. Toward life, toward school and especially toward writing. I claim to want to write for a living, yet all I ever feel is fear that my writing won't amount to anything worthwhile. In addition, I've been too lazy to sit down and even try to write anything. In light of my recent birthday however, I've yet again realized how quickly life passes. I don't want to wake up years from now, having squandered my time half-assedly attempting to make it as a screenwriter and never fully facing my own insecurities about writing, only to realize it's not even what I want to do with my life. Hopefully, this blog will either reinvigorate me in my pursuit of professional writing or expose the terrifying truth that I may have spent four years and a ton of money pursuing a degree that I don't intend to use.
Despite my facade of resolve, I'm anxious about this post. My mind is riddled with the machine gun fire of a million negative thoughts, "nobody wants to read about your life!" and "it's not funny! Why are you writing this!?" and "this Shawshank redemption metaphor is stupid and incoherent!" BUT, I bet Andy Dufresne was pretty damn scared when he went about digging a hole through the wall of a maximum security prison with a tiny hammer pick. He didn't let fear paralyze him though. As comfortable as I've become in my prison of inactivity and mental decay, I can't shake the knowledge of that other world out there. A few birthdays ago, I still belonged to that world.
I've been sitting on the couch for months, tiny hammer pick in hand (a metaphor for the ability to write), shooting glances toward a concrete wall (a metaphor for some obstacle, writing I guess. So, wait, maybe the hammer pick is the keyboard or the pen? I don't know, it's getting really hot in my apartment and I'm having thought troubles) and I've been too afraid to start digging. I've been getting busy dying for too long. And while I'm not quite ready to crawl through "five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness" that not even grizzled old Morgan Freeman can imagine, I think I'm ready to finally try living. I'm not happy with this post. But at least I've started digging.
