~~~
WWWIIII (The Journey)
Some lonely music in his fuzzy background plays solemnly and he wonders vaguely whether the singer is a lassie or a lad. The guitar in the song shifts his thoughts and, in a way, moulds his artwork. He smiles. The humour - his art work being moulded by another artist and sold for so much money (one day at least). He has a gene that likes to get away with cheeky little things. Even if being inspired by another artist isn’t really that big a deal.
He finishes off his work for the day with a “I’ve had more than enough” and looks at the clock. It’s been 10 minutes since he began and he’s done about as much quality as 10 minutes could achieve. He gets a little angry at himself.
“Why can’t I be an inspired artist?”
He thinks of his artistic friends, begins a course of jealousy over their ability, at long hard working hours, then reminds himself that he works differently to them. He’s easily distracted for one, he hates finishing things for a second and he hates anything that relates to work… and, he notes with a terrible pang of guilt, that he secretly, almost secret to himself, thinks of his art as work.
It is work of course. Just because someone (not him) finds creativity an easy thing, as easy as walking even, doesn’t mean it isn’t work. If a farmer found plowing a field not only easy, but incredibly rewarding… it’s still work.
He puts the kettle on. Puts the TV on. Turns the radio off (naturally) and then turns the TV off because it’s the middle of the day and (naturally), there’s nothing on.
By god he’s alone. So alone. It wasn’t always this hard. But that’s because it got worse (duh). Motivation got worse. Harder. Eventually, on the rare days it was convenient to do something with friends, he’d usually ring up at the last minute and cancel. He’d gotten into a downer’s spiral. He wasn’t good socially. He craved attention in public, but didn’t know how to get it and besides he hated that part about himself, so instead became introverted and secretly blamed everyone else for not being part of his life, his incredible life. He was an incredible person! Really he was… Now who was it that had told him that? Oh shit, his parents!
“Bloody hell. I gotta get a life!”
Some days, it got too hard to bear and he’d end up hurting himself in a mindless desperate rage. He’d kinda wake up to his stupidity alone, pulling viciously at his hair so that blood would begin to bleed on his scalp. He never felt any relief from it. It was just a way to take a break from coping.
He also had a problem with sleep. He’d prefer sitting at his desk in front of his computer rearranging his limited music selection into multiple playlists. He’d prefer to live out the horrors of one day than go to sleep and wake to face another.
When at last he did go to bed at some wee hour of the morning, he’d sleep and sleep and sleep. He was unfit. He was getting chubby around the belt from too much pasta and sitting at the desktop.
It was time he did something good with his life, though he wasn’t sure what. He’d think about it.
“I could think about it today!” He told himself as he looked at the clock, noting that it was only 4:00 in the afternoon and there was definitely still some, if not much, thinking time left.
He opened up a word document on his computer. Took a good long sip of his weak tea (because he was running out of tea bags and the money to buy more, so therefore only used half a tea bag per cup) and typed:
My plan.
He thought carefully. Summed up some likely questions:
What would I like to achieve?
What steps must I take to succeed?
E.g. Who must I kill?
Then he laughed because that last question wasn’t serious but was instead a small show of his vast and glorious humour.
He typed these likely questions down. He noted the words. The beginning of each sentence began with a W. This was intriguing. He even began to believe the three W’s were important. To him at least. To him, those questions were the beginning of a turning point, THE turning point! THE turning point to an amazing and rewarding, impassioned, and above all successful life.
It was realizing this that put him on the path of answering these questions.
“I would like to achieve a tattoo of 3 W’s.”
He stood by a mirror “I would like to throw an art exhibition, exhibiting my work!”
He stood by a painting “I want to be fit!”
He threw on some clean undies “I want a girl friend!”
He typed this beneath his newly abbreviated questions - three W’s. This had lost the original meaning of most questions except the first – What would I like to achieve… But it didn’t really matter because without the second question he was doomed to stagnate. And stagnation was his curse and nature.
After typing:
. I would like to achieve a tattoo of 3 W’s
. I would like to throw an art exhibition, exhibiting my work
. I want to be fit
. I want a girl friend
He noted that all answers started with I’s. It meant something, so he changed his first answer to:
. I would like to achieve a tattoo of 3 W’s and 4 I’s.
He’d go to bed early this night and wake up early as well so that he could start his magnificent journey. The journey of “Wwwiiii!”