Demotivation

A Story by Snowingphoenix

Sometimes writing is hard. Scratch that- Writing is hard. This is something I threw together while discovering how hard writing is and how despite this, I always find myself writing to cope with it.

Its 20 minutes to 11 pm on an unseasonably cool Wednesday night in June. Summer is a month in and all you have to show for it is the unpacked suitcases of clothes, trinkets and whatever else was in your now empty dorm room from college, hidden behind the newly cleaned room, courtesy of your mother. At least, you’ve been working. Somehow you landed an internship at the local TV station that no one knows exists, yet you’ve been finally getting the experience you’ve always wanted.

Television production is what you want to do, right?

Or is it writing?

“Well, why not both,” a young a foolish you convinced yourself two years ago when you made the switch from creative writing to communications with a TV/Radio concentration.

Well, you guess it wasn’t THAT foolish. At least communications an umbrella major that covers a plethora of things, from journalism to public relations, to your bread and almond butter, the entertainment industry. Is it ironic that you want to go into the same career as some of the most annoying, soul-sucking and utterly mindless individuals you’ve ever seen. This is the same industry that continues to whitewash roles meant for ethnic minorities and somehow never completely learn their lesson. And the same industry full of perverted, rich and almost untouchable male actors who have learned to live with the sexual atrocities they have committed against people, men, and women. Don’t forget the wage gap that still exists no only in the industry, but throughout the workforce! But once again, you’re on another social justice fueled rant and that's a whole other can of worms.

Yes, you’re going into that industry and honestly, it's because you don’t have any other choice.

You can't math to save your life, science was cool until you discovered that had math too.

English usually means you’re either going to teach or be an author of some kind which seems a bit more daunting than being a screenwriter (although you damn well know both are hard as s**t), and history/visual art/ anything else is hobbies but not a career.

But do you really want this? Do you want to write for the rest of your life? Your paycheck, standard of living, everything dependant on if your brain can spew something worth watching, reading and people talking about fervently like its Game of Thrones but without all the dying and incest? Or Rick and Morty but actually good and without its cancerous fan base?

You realize that you can insult these overrated shows all you want- they are where you want your shows to be. And you’re stuck here, in your room on the crib turned into twin sized bed, the same one since birth, eyes burning staring into the dimly lit 10-inch screen as words vomit from the mouth of the blinking cursor onto a google doc page, aptly titled “word vomit.”

You just got extremely meta.

You wonder if anyone will see this, what you are writing right now. You wonder if it's just going to sit and rot, just like everything else you’ve ever written except for one story you wrote in 11th grade about a murder going insane because of the guilt from the crime they committed. Was it a fluke? You don’t know but it remains the only thing you’ve ever had the guts to show people.

More likely than not, this piece of s**t you call writing will sit here for a while, and join the rest of the blocks of paragraphs and pages of texts waiting to experience a life out of the Google graveyard/limbo. You and those docs have that in common- the waiting thing, not the google graveyard part.

Anyways, before you started this nonsensical existential rant, you went on youtube to play that one Jhene Aiko song that has a really sick beat. But of course, Youtube being Youtube, you had to get through an ad before you had the privilege of watching or listening for that matter, to this really catchy tune. For some reason, the slightly chubby Asian man on the screen caught your eye (but when don’t Asian people catch your eye, you weeb), and you did something very unexpected- you watched the ad.

He articulately went through the list of successful Youtubers he claimed to have cultivated into the stars they are today- a bold claim.

“What are his credentials anyway,” you think.

You’ve never seen him before, for all you know he could be a catfish or something. But then he talked about his channel and mentioned his friend whose name you forgot, but honestly, you forgot that guy’s name too. He talked about how they had been studying the science of making viral videos and how they are sharing their world-renowned expertise for FREE for a limited time only.

What a steal!

WHat a deal!

It's your lucky day, isn’t it?

The one day you feel the least motivated, void of inspiration and creativity so much so, that you even contemplated watching anime again just to feel that rush of creative juice you would feel at the end of every episode of Soul Eater, or Durarara or Baccano. But the ship has sailed. You can do it without it. You have to.

Back to the Asian man; he beckoned from the medium-sized video player to take up his generous offer which was FREE for a LIMITED TIME. and why a limited time you wonder, but not until he says why himself; because he doesn’t want the procrastinators to see it.

They don’t have time for procrastinators.

Damn. Ouch. Call out post much?

Its as if they baited you with all the sweet talk about not settling for a 9 to 5 job or getting rid of that debt that has only gotten worse, especially since you decided to transfer schools, only to gut punch you so hard, your stomach begins to churn. You realize that is what you are, a procrastinator so maybe you don’t qualify for this blessing that you so happen to have stumbled upon while waiting for your damn video to play.

You’re frustrated again. This is what you have to look forward to after college- condescending youtube ads of a chubby Asian man telling you that you don’t deserve a chance because you procrastinate sometimes?

“Well f**k you, asian man! This is me, not procrastinating! Look, I’m writing, I think! It's nonsensical and very specific, but its something!”

You this in your head so loud, you think your giraffe pillow pet braced against the back of your neck can hear you. Your eyes burn and melt into the screen you begin to think about your life without this. Without the pressure to write all the time because that's literally all you have. You refuse to work temp jobs for the rest of your life, although they are pretty useful at the moment. And you know you’ll eventually develop the skills to produce and direct. But what you wanted to do, what you’ve always dreamed of one way or another was to create, and you do so by writing. And yes, you’re in a slump, void of decent ideas it seems. The only thing you have the energy to write is this unnecessarily long letter to yourself, cleverly disguised in the second person.

But it's something. It's words. You are writing. And no matter what, you will never stop.