What is your passion in life?
When I was in college, literally all I did was write. I had some zines, I published some stuff in this little journal or that. But mostly: I wrote. I wrote simply as an act of existing, being in the Now and creating.
And then what happens is that you leave the rarefied bubble of academia, go into corporate life, and spend the next 10-20 years having it hammered in your head that what you did those 4 golden years of high creativity was naive at best, and has no connection in any way to the reality of the Entertainment Machine.
And that in itself is a kind of startling and soul-killing realization, but here comes the kicker: you are also told over and over again (most especially by yourself) that you might as well not even bother writing anymore. That simply the act of writing—of pretending to be this presumably talented creative entity for a few stolen hours a day—is just a big laugh and waste of time.
And you see Crap™ elevated to godlike status, mass-produced to the point of infinity and de facto worshiped—and Genius slaving away at minimum-wage jobs. You buy the brilliant self-pubbed comic book of some great, raw talent who drifts in and out of your life like smoke; you buy their book, you never hear about them again. Then you have Dreck™ shoved into your face 24/7; and you buy said Dreck™, just to know what is happening, or maybe you just get caught up in the hype. It’s nice to feel a part of Something™.
Whereas with the wraithlike indie creator that popped into and out of your vision for that strange, magical moment…what’s the most you can do with that? You can write a review or endorsement of some kind, I guess. You can buy an extra copy for a friend.
How many of us have given these hopeful new talents our own version of the dream-killing “you’ll shoot your eye out” speech? Be honest—how many here have done it? Aren’t we wizened and clever!
But how many years, weeks, and days do any of us have left on this planet? Seriously, take out your Dayplanner, and figure this stuff out. Give yourself a reasonable estimate on how many Good Weeks you have left, given your age and overall health. Now subtract Possible World Catastrophe and Possible Sudden Accidental Death and Possible Onset Of Chronic-to-Fatal Illness from that total.
At the very End—that last time you cross “GO” on the Monopoly board—what you didn’t do, because you didn’t want to be regarded as this idealistic vulnerable dweeb, isn’t going to make a bit of difference.
What’s going to matter is what you did—what you actually wrote or drew or created, regardless if it’s mass-produced or confined to 15 limited edition hand-printed copies. (Some more points added for creating from the Heart.)
Then you can drift to whatever heaven/DMT-induced momentary Afterlife that is waiting for you, knowing that you have no regrets. Knowing that in The Great Big Balance Sheet of existence, you put some extra scratch-marks in the Goodness/Creation/Evolution column; rather than adding more Dreck™ to the other column, making it harder for other people, closing minds and trapping their attention within prefab memes and cynical idea-viruses.
If you’re not going to make your comic now…then when??? If you are not taking action right now to tell your story, when will it be told?
