Doing It Right

        ‘The blank of the page eats you up. It swallows you whole. Digests you. Shits you out.’

She said this with a far-off look in her eyes like she was gazing upon a reverie. 

‘You have to learn how to accept the process, don’t fight it. That will only make it harder. You want to know the trick? There isn’t one. It’s just the process. Pick up the pen and start slashing. Open up the tab and start typing. It’s the simplest things that are always the most difficult.’ She finished with her eyes on mine. They were mostly green—her eyes.  

‘You gotta have a routine. Every writer has one. For example: I write best when I’m in my room with a fresh cup of coffee and an incense burning somewhere close by. There just must be some type of background noise going on too, whether it be rainstorm noises or just plain old jazz. Nothing with words though, that would throw me off. Unless it was The Office or something.’ She’s wearing a white wife-beater that’s too small for her. Her shorts look ready to burst and her hair begs for a comb. She’s pretty though. Not “shit yourself pretty” mind you, but pretty enough to turn some heads. 

‘The easiest way to build a routine is to simply start writing every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s for two minutes or two hours. Just get some words down on paper or up on a screen or whatever. Get that shit outa your head! I’m telling you, that’s the only way you’ll get any better. Wanna know why I’m telling you this? Because I can tell you’re not a writer. I can tell by the way you type. You go too slow. When you do try to go fast every other key you press is the backspace. I can tell by the way you hold your pencil, by the way you shape your letters. I can tell by the way you sit. Shit dude, I can even smell it on you. I can tell you’re not a writer. Not yet anyway.’ 

She was right. Who was I back then anyway? Objectively, I was a loser. At the time I was smoking too much, drinking too much, eating too much. I spent most of my time watching anime and movies based on ‘true stories’. I lived on campus but try asking about me and the only response you’d get back is “Who?”. I wasn’t an ugly kid but I wasn’t going to the gym religiously just yet. All around, let’s just say I had a lot of room for improvement and I knew it. 

See, that’s arguably the best and worst aspect of my whole situation. Best because I knew I needed to change. Worst because there’s a change that is needed and every minute I spent not changed is a minute spent on bullshit that I knew was bullshit. If you think about it too much the time gets away from you. 

I wasn’t always on my bullshit though. Throughout my latter years of adolescence there were moments of productivity, short little spouts of growth here and there. I know the difference between spending and saving. I know how it feels to live with a healthy body. I understand what it means to do things right. This knowledge makes it all the worse for me whenever I find myself doing wrong. But on the flip side, it makes it all the better whenever I happen to find myself doing right.