I need to start posting more often…

Woah, what happened?

As much as I love posting on my blog, I can’t seem to get myself to post that often.  Last time I posted something, I was half way through my second semester of my freshman year of college.  Now, I’m a sophomore.  Holy damn, I need to post more often.

But yes, as I just mentioned, this is my second year of college.  It’s not that big of a deal, though.  I still live at home and I still barely have a social life, so I suppose I’m a college student without any of the qualities that make being a college student fun.  But I honestly don’t care about that, since I’m happy that my life is the way it is right now.  There’s been a few changes since my last post (though they won’t come as a surprise to my 2 or 3 readers).  First of all, school’s back in session.  Now, I know that doesn’t sound like something to be happy about, but I’m actually kind of glad to be back in school.  School gives me something to do with my week, instead of laying around doing nothing.  Summer isn’t all that great once you realize that you have no social life and every day is a stay-at-home vacation.  Y’know, the kind that mothers and old people take when they just want some time to themselves.  ”I’m just gonna go home, grab a Light Yoplait out of the fridge, pop season 1 of The Office into the DVD player and just relax.  OH, DWIGHT, YOU GIVE MY LIFE MEANING!”  It gets kind of monotonous after a while.  Luckily, I had my friends Kayleen, Jared, Nathaniel, and “The Gang” (group of friends that tend to do things together: Megan, Brennan, Jesse, Susan, and Carolyn) to help pull me out of my summer coma on several awesome occasions.  There’s a reason I say I’d go crazy if I didn’t have my friends, and I think everyone else feels the same way.

But school is here again, and summer has gone into hibernation.  Although the biggest problem with going back to school (at least for me) is that I still have yet to figure out what I wish to do with my life.  Everyone who reads my blog (all 3 of you) knows that I enjoy writing.  Poetry has to be my favorite, but I occasionally write a short story here and a one-act play there.  But the problem with writing is that I really have to be in the mood to write, and it’s not like I can get into that mood whenever I please.  The conditions have to be just right; time, silence, state of mind, even weather is a factor sometimes, and I can’t write whenever I feel like it.  Writers have deadlines, just like everyone else, and if there’s one thing that I can’t stand, it’s deadlines.  Time limits will be the death of me.  No, seriously.  Time limits will kill me some day.  I mean, figuratively speaking, my life has a time limit, right?  So once that runs out, I’ll be dead.  Don’t argue with me, I feel like I’m on a roll.

And then there’s the income, which is almost inexistent for the contemporary poet.  Not many people know this, but poets don’t make money off of poetry.  Even getting your poem put into a popular literary magazine will only get you a dollar or two (probably more than that but not by much).  Poets can’t live off of publication.  They live off of presentation.  To actually make money as a poet, you have to travel the country, speaking to audiences in various colleges and communities, which will only happen if you become recognized.  And even then, the income isn’t all that desirable.  Most contemporary poets not only write and speak, but they teach as well.  I don’t have the patience to write, speak, and teach.  I don’t want to be a freaking college professor.  If I say I want to become a writer, that means I want to become a WRITER, not a professor.  So I suppose being a poet is out of the question.  Maybe as a side job, but certainly not as a career choice.

Then there’s short stories and novels, and those both take patience and a LOT of planning out and mapping.  I’ve written short stories before, and they’re not easy to make.  When most people think of short stories, they think of a story that takes up a maximum of 3 pages.  No.  That’s not the case.  Not if you want to be a serious writer.  Most real short stories are a minimum of 5 pages.  Some will even stretch past 15.  Holy crap, that’s practically like writing an essay, and we all know comes with writing essays: DEADLINES.

And then there’s playwriting and screen writing, which are sometimes even more difficult to make than short stories.  Besides, I like theatre, but only as an actor or audience member.  All of the other roles in the creation of a play just turn me off.

So, I’ll still keep writing, but not as a job.

And by the way, I have no problem with difficulty.  I know I can’t expect things to be easy to obtain, and I’m okay with that.  I’m just impatient.  That’s the biggest problem here.

I’ve gotten a few suggestions from people as to what I should be.  Lots of people think I should be a comedian, which I suppose I could see myself doing.  The only problem with that is that I’m not the kind of guy who can sit down and write jokes.  I’ve tried that already, and the jokes I come up with are usually drawn out with weak punch lines.  I’m better at coming up with stuff off the top of my head.  That’s where I can really generate laughs, and improv stand up isn’t the most marketable form of comedy out there.  I’ll still consider it an option, though.

Another thing I’ve heard is that I should be a political commentator, like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reily or Keith Olbermann, which I suppose I might be able to do.  However, as usual, there is a problem with that.  Has anyone noticed what the political media has shaped itself to be nowadays?  On one side, we have liberals, who I tend to agree with more often than not.  But first of all, for some reason, liberal commentators have problems with generating audiences, probably because their majority demographic is well-educated young adults who are interested in the world of politics, which doesn’t provide the biggest audience.  Take Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, for example.  Two of the biggest and most popular liberal commentators in America, and just look at their viewership; it pales in comparison to the audiences of Fox News commentators.  Second, liberal commentators are generally not very respected, no matter how fair their commentary may be.  If I’m going to be a commentator, I don’t want to be just another one of the dozens of heavily biased news anchors that the world can do without.  I would rather be as fair as I can be, stating my opinion but leaving plenty of room for the opinions of others.  But even then, I would be criticized and ridiculed from every direction on a daily basis.

Then there’s conservative commentators, who I don’t even want to be associated with.  It’s not because of their opinions, it’s because of their reasoning.  Conservative commentators tend to be angry, close-minded people who REFUSE to support anyone with even the slightest liberal beliefs, and why?  Simply because they’re liberals.  That’s all it takes.  If you don’t agree with a conservative commentator, then you are the enemy.  Take Rush Limbaugh, for example.  When Haiti was hit with an earthquake, President Obama stated that he would help support the relief effort in any way he could and stated that the American people should do the same, which by the way, is EXACTLY what John McCain would have done if he were elected, and is EXACTLY what George W. Bush did when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck Indonesia and parts of India.  To the rest of us, it seemed like a level-headed decision and the overall right thing to do.  To Rush, it was a shameless attempt to garner respect from the American public.  That’s right.  Helping Haiti recover from a devastating earthquake was nothing more than an attempt to make President Obama look good.

So count me out of that.

But I suppose I still have some time to decide what I want to do, and I’ll decide eventually.

Wow, this is a long post.  I hope it’s not too long for some people to want to read.

Anyway, for now, I’ll have to continue bagging groceries and making minimum wage, which is a job that I snagged in mid August.  But I’ve only had the job for a few weeks, so I don’t have much to say about it.  I’ll speak more about it eventually, but now I need to head to my first class of the day: International Politics.  Yay.

…God, I’m such a pessimist.  But hey, there’s probably a bright side somewhere.  I’m just too lazy to search for it.