The Grinding Frustration of Having Dreams
I miss how it used to be. You know, the days when you could just dream about being something—push the reality of it off into the distance, always a month away, or a year, or four years—and that was enough. God, it can be so miserable having dreams. Having goals and aspirations in general, I suppose. It hurts. Not even the having to go out and actually work for the dreams so much—it’s more the manifestation of that incessant, unbearable internal pressure when you’re not working that really gets to me. I feel that pressure a lot. It’s a heavy burden on my back that doesn’t ever seem to go away. I’m getting sick of it. I don’t know how much more I can take.
Yeah, I don’t seem to know what to write these days. I love poetry, but it seems so damn impractical. Like, I really just can’t imagine how I’d ever be able to secure a job that’s centered around writing—or even teaching, discussing, analyzing—poetry. I mean, think about it: how many fucking poets do you know? No, no, I don’t mean like EE Cummings or Robert Frost or John Keats. I mean poets that you personally, in your day-to-day life, know as a friend or an acquaintance or a family member. Yeah, not quite as easy as name dropping Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson, is it?
Here’s my answer: zero. I don’t know a single poet in my life (save for the MFA student currently teaching my Beginning Poetry Workshop). A single fucking one. Maybe that’s my problem, though. I don’t personally know any poets, so I extrapolate this data out onto a societal level and make the false inference that it would just be plain impossible! Plain impossible to write poetry and still be able to buy milk and bread at the grocery store! I don’t know…
It’s kinda weird, though. Barring some crazy catastrophe or some spontaneous decision to drop out and move to Switzerland, I will graduate from college just over a year from now (God, that hurts to write and look at and think about). And I have no clue—absolutely zero—what I’m going to be doing for work when that time comes. I say “weird”, but really it’s fucking terrifying. I mean, I’m kinda hosed. I’ve never had an internship, for starters, and up until about a month ago the only actual job I had ever held was working in the kitchen of Chick-fil-A the summer before my freshman year. So, yeah—not too much professional experience. But, hey! I’m just gonna be a writer, right? I’m just gonna write and somehow make money…
Money! Work! Food on the fucking dinner table! I think that might be where the heavy bulk of that internal pressure I mentioned earlier is really coming from. Like, if I were a freshman in college again right now and that post-graduation abyss was still comfortably cushioned by a seemingly endless gulf of four years, I’d be damn happy with the progress (little though it honestly is) I’ve been making with my writing lately. I’ve got time to develop! I’ve got time to be free! from pressure! and anxiety! and the fucking unavoidable pull of this capitalist nightmare I was born into! But that’s just not where I’m at in my life right now. Do I need to repeat it? I GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE IN JUST OVER A YEAR. I WILL HAVE TO GET A JOB AND JOIN THE SYSTEM AND SOMEHOW SURVIVE ON MY OWN. FIND A PLACE TO LIVE. TRY TO FIND A GIRL, START A FAMILY. BE A NORMAL FUCKING ADULT.
Is it still hard to see now? How writing—my fucking deepest dreams, most meaningful aspirations—can feel so pointless, so depressingly futile when placed side-by-side those big, bold capitalized words that basically feel like the world pulling me aside and telling me it’s time to grow up and let go of childish dreams? Are you confused? Why my worry about writing is manifesting as this sack of bricks that I have to sling over my shoulder and carry with me everywhere I go? Why I feel like throwing in the towel and just calling it quits on everything? Why I feel like crying right now? …
It can be so miserable having dreams.