Now that my thesis is in the capable editing hands of the meticulous and most lovely Leticia, I've been trying to move on to the next step - convincing someone to give me the cash.Maybe I'm not in the 1% of people who think they're gonna be successful musicians and are totally right, but in the 99% of talentless, misguided dickheads.- Jeremy Usborne (from Peep Show)
So I made an appointment with a careers adviser at the university and she nodded when I replied to her questions, gave me some helpful leaflets and books and sent me on my merry way. In the midst of some sporadic copywriting and media consulting work, I really have to move into phase II of my master plan - making a real career out of journalism and writing in general.
I have some ideas and after being knocked back a few times by editors, I finally found a home for a piece on the "media virus" - but I also had an epiphany strolling around a supermarket today. And they say this is what it's like, forever - as Devin Townsend once sang.
I will face a barrage of rejection and stonewalling as I shop around my works. But then there's an added kicker of my own self-doubting and self-loathing when it comes to almost anything I produce. Something that's plagued me since childhood is the fact I don't think my writing is worth anything of note. I've always figured writing was what I was good at, but I'm at pains to believe that it's marketable or even passable. The gulf between the "greats" and the lowly prose etched out by yours truly seems almost too distant to traverse. Even praise from on high will be taken with skepticism, so what can be done to overcome such a debilitating perfectionist streak in which almost nothing I write will be sent to a publisher or editor without any reservation - something that I can really believe in?
This is the curse of attending so called "elite" institutions - others may hold me up as an overachiever but in my eyes I'm anything but - I barely have a bank balance over triple digits these days and I still live with my folks. My car has smash damage I can't afford to repair and a warning light glows from my dashboard every time I cautiously start my engine; my fingers tremble on the keys as I turn over the ignition, hoping that it'll still start.
Middle class problems, sure; but the charge that I'm an overachiever doesn't really hold water with me.
Then there is the cognitive dissonance after a year and a half of a Master of Communication and Media studies. Erin, a dear friend of mine pointed out that my degree is largely theoretical and not a pure "journalism" degree. Though it was covered briefly, there was no opportunity to simulate a newsroom setting in print, online, radio or for television. Sure, I can rattle off what McChesney thinks of commercialism and globalization or what Ong thinks of the Orality-Literacy divide, but which kind of employer gives a shit about that at the end of the day? Perhaps, I took the wrong course after all? But what is done cannot be undone, so I press onward.
That said, it almost feels like despite all the advances I've made as I charge headlong into the frontier of the future, there are undefended salients forgotten by the reserve units only to have their lines breached time and time again. But what causes their retreat? The overwhelming "parental" voice that reminds me nothing I do is ever satisfactory? An incessant drilling into my head from an early age that making money is the root of all success? The lack of understanding from friends and family of what really is important to me as a man and as a writer? The lack of patience that has plagued me from the beginning - if something doesn't come naturally, I may as well give up? I mean, look at all these people that are "better" than me, can I ever truly equal them? I suppose since January of last year I have moved from a definite "no" to an open-ended "maybe." Getting to an unequivocal "yes" is the hard part.
It almost drives me to tears, bashing my head against a wall to remedy all these maladaptive beliefs in order to replace them with rational, real-world, true-to-fact views. This year and a half has been one of transition from the individual riddled with psychic scars and gripped by fear to an integrated man, unafraid of the future and ready to steel himself against the barrage of attack and accept the beauty and tenderness of love from friends, lovers and family.
Though trite and cliche, the irreducible fact is that as long as I'm trying, as long as I'm plunging one foot in front of the other and trying to learn from my mistakes then I've won half the battle. So I'll say to myself here and attempt to remember these words as I write and read them:
Keep moving, Tom. Don't look back.