Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?

Saturday I was at a special screening of Steven Spielberg's WAR HORSE, flipping through a copy of TIMEOUT before the show started... and I damn near had a nervous breakdown. Paging through a copy of TIMEOUT is a fantastic way to remind yourself how much other people are doing and how little you've accomplished.

How much work have I created in the past 5 years that no one will ever see? Does it matter how brilliant some of that material might be? Does it matter how much I've grown as a writer? It's all trees falling in the woods with no one around to hear them. I've got a whole forest of trees that have fallen without a sound.

What I've got to prove is a burden that grows greater every year. Every month. Every minute.

Comparison is a terrible motivator. It's the worst form of violence against yourself. It encourages abject impotence when it's fuck time. But even without comparison, that nagging voice whispers

What have you been doing? What have you done? What are you going to do?

It's demoralizing.

That critical voice in my head is the cruelest. No one is meaner than the voice that echoes in my skull.

The persistent thought is that I want to hide from the world. I don't want to be seen. Profoundly ashamed of the lack of any evidence of what I've worked on in the past 5 years. I used to think this was all part of "paying my dues" to the universe, but it's so much worse than that. This is Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity.

I *envy* people with regular jobs and regular careers. People without a deep, burning dream they're driven to pursue beyond reason. People with 9-5s who look forward to holiday bonuses and vacations to nice places. People who worry over the future of their growing children more than themselves.

And still. Despite the past 5 years collecting some of the darkest days of my life. I can't give up the dream. I'm past the point of no return. I'm in too deep. Like fucking Chumbawamba, I can't stop getting back up again, even though it gets harder and harder.