I'm not sure where or when the contempt began. I have my suspicions, but nothing is specific. I wonder if the contempt began slowly, unnoticed and small?
The early seeds of my contempt began in 1999 and 2000 when on the advice of older and wiser people, I took to working a stressful job.
Deconstructing that a little, at the time I was young, a recent college graduate and I had just spent an entire year traveling and reading books. These older and wiser people (we'll call them mom and dad) used reason to help me into a decision that I reluctantly made. In those days, I could only see in extremes. I could write or live like everyone else. I ultimately left the job and in the first month afterward, I wrote more than I had in life. The conclusion: don't listen to advice. Don't follow advice from anyone, not even me. (For the love of decency, especially not my advice.) If you want to write, write. Just fucking write and do all those projects you want to do. Write poetry, especially bad poetry. Forget the critics, especially the one inside.
Now, if you find yourself having to work in order to pay the bills, this is my case, find work that does not impede on your writing. After all, this is life and we all know the outcome. Knowing that death is waiting for us does not make the normal pursuits of modern life so meaningful. Why should material possessions and the endless pursuit of money take up so much time? I rather have hours filled with writing and a large volume of work rather than the big TV or the big car or the big gut. Contempt? Oh, yeah! I will never follow advice which takes me away physically, emotionally or intellectually from this pen, this notebook and these thoughts.
I write.
It's creation.
Some folks call is art. If we're not making art, then what are we making? A perpetuation of those things which are opposite of art.
I say I care about only two things. Writing is one. I bet you can guess at the other.
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