Other People Are Doctors

It’s 8:15 pm on a Tuesday night, and I just outbid and won an ebay auction for a copy of Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Other people are doctors.

It’s weird when you sort of accept failure as your best talent. I can fail better than anyone. Give me something and I guarantee you that I will fail at it. And if you fail at succeeding, doesn’t that sort of make you a success? I failed at being straight, I failed at having my parents love me, and you can bet I’m gonna burn the shit out of this grilled cheese too, because that’s just how I roll. I will say though, there’s a sense of comfort in failure. There’s a sense of comfort in accepting that your standards for yourself and your accomplishments are so low that even YOU can’t be disappointed by them.

People say it’s not good to compare yourself to others, especially based on sense of achievements, but I think you kind of have to. I recently read a quote that said something along the lines of “it’s ok if you don’t do anything with your life other than exist, it doesn’t make you or your time spent here any less valid”, and while this is true, I do think for some people it’s nice to have that comparison to other people to drive you to do better. I know for a fact that I’m irritated as hell that I can work my ass off writing for over 10 years, have essentially zero success at it and yet “Cat gets lost in a paper bag” gets 13 million views in two days on youtube and he now has his own TV show. That just makes me try harder. In the past year since living with my girlfriend at her folks place, I’ve written almost 4 complete novels. That’s more than I’ve ever done, especially in that amount of time. But can your own failure motivate your own urge to succeed?

It’s a little hard to start caring at age 26 when I haven’t cared for the majority of the years that preceded this one. When I’ve spent a good portion of my life openly admitting that I’m a failure, and that it’s just who I am and I’ve embraced that, it is a little strange to suddenly be hit with a feeling of “shiiiit, if only I could sell SOMETHING I’ve created…” and not for the sake of fame or money, but simply for the sake of more people seeing the work and hoping it resonates with them. Art isn’t about money. It’s about self fulfillment and self introspection and okay sometimes stuffing dollar bills down Wendys thong but in the end it’s about looking inward and trying to grow as a person. If that same artwork helps other people too? Well that’s just a bigger bonus. THAT’S my paycheck. Not…ya know…a paycheck. So I say yes, other people are doctors, and that’s great. Congratulations to them and their trophy wife and their third houseboat.

But I’m me. Failure or not I’m me and that’s a success too, even if only because I’m good at being terrible. Hey, this self loathing thing ain’t easy, okay? It takes a lot of time and energy to maintain this amount of suck.

I’m a failure. That’s just who I am.