Starting Over

It's time to stop listening to the voice of my dead father

I started blogging in the late 90s. By the early 2000s, everyone and their grandma had a blog. It was around that time I got slapped on the wrist at work for vaguely mentioning a co-worker on my blog; he felt his privacy had been violated. He said it felt like he’d been raped. No kidding. I didn’t even use his name and only said someone in my office was giving me a hard time. I was reported to human resources. It was a bad time I might turn into a short story someday. After that incident, writing for the general public lost its effervescence.

Over the years, I’ve started, stopped, and restarted blogging because the format changes so frequently, the consensus changes, and sometimes you think about all the millions of blogs and writers and content creators and get overwhelmed so bad you can’t function. Some call it writer’s block or imposter syndrome. In my personal journal, I called it a “distraction.” In fact, I wrote several pages justifying why I would never blog again and how my life would be so much better without it.

I have this horrible voice in my head that says, “Who wants to read about your stupid life anyway?” It took a while, but I eventually realized that the horrible voice was my dad, who in the late 90s said, “No one wants to read your dirty laundry.” Amazing, how 26 years later, even now that my dad is dead and buried, he still has an effect on me. He was a great guy and as good a dad as he could have been. I can still hear him asking me how this venture makes money. It’s a cultural thing. As Mexicans, you’re not supposed to do anything that doesn’t lead to kids and security. I took a totally different path.

One of the few photos I have of me and my dad.

I also never knew what my angle was. In the various and many times I’ve attempted blogging or content creating, I felt like I had to come up with some gimmick (my dad’s voice again) and give people what they want. At one point, I had a food blog where I (hilariously) reverse engineered French cafe food I’d eaten in Paris. I say hilarious with tongue in cheek because a food blog is more work than any one person should ever do for no money or glory. And there were others I won’t bother to mention. I now realize that it doesn’t matter if this makes money, goes viral, or is the first Substack to be awarded a Pulitzer. Nothing matters. I’m not exactly cosplaying a nihilist when I say that, but it’s just that the universe doesn’t care about me, my blog, or my imposter syndrome. Only you and me care. OK, maybe your best friend Stacey cares, too. Thanks Stacey! We three give meaning to all of this. We decide what it is and how it feels.

Over the last three weeks in London, I’ve had a lot of quiet nights to think about what I want out of life. No, Dad, I still don’t want a job that provides health insurance or a 401K. I worked for “the man” for many years. I’ve cleaned toilets, served food, and washed dishes (not in that order). I’ve taken heaping piles of shit from petty managers drunk on their own power. I’ve sold furniture and cleaned offices, answered phones, and waited at a temp agency all day for a minimum wage job filing paperwork for lawyers. Been there, done that. I tried that route, Dad, and it wasn’t for me. There comes a point in your life when you must stop listening to your dead father and accept that you’re an artist and being an artist is like, Dickensian-level hard. It’s Pip running through the frigid marshes back to his abusive abode, fearing the King’s soldiers will clap him in irons and load him onto the Hulk for stealing a chunk of mincemeat. That’s how hard it is.

Everyone tells you being an artist means you’re subscribing to a life of suffering, but they never elaborate. From what I’ve figured out so far, it literally means hating yourself, thinking you’re a fucking moron, worrying no one likes you, losing your friends because you were so busy writing your novel you forgot to call anyone, never-ever making money off your art, questioning your very existence on earth, comparing yourself to every asshole who gets a book deal at age fifteen, not sleeping, having an aching back and tired wrists, not eating right because you were so busy writing your novel you forgot to eat, pissing off your dog because “One more chapter,” and taking shitty jobs to pay the rent while you work up the nerve to submit your short story to a literary journal. When you finally submit, you wait six months for some poor, underpaid editor to send you a boiler-plate response: Sorry, not for us.

So, why bother? Romantics like to say it’s because you were born to be a writer or it’s your calling. I’m rather practical in thinking that at some point in my life someone encouraged me to read. Because I was good at it, I did lots of it. I also had a good imagination. And because I did lots of reading and had a good imagination, I found myself wanting to tell stories like my idol Ray Bradbury and make someone else feel the same way I did when I read “All Summer in a Day.” As time goes on, you start identifying as a writer or artist, you work at it, get good at it, put money into your education, and start wearing black. Eventually, you pass a point of no return where changing passions sounds like a lot of work and hey, you’re still enjoying the intermittent reinforcement of being a writer, so yeah, let’s keep going. If that’s a calling, it’s more like a dinnertime call from a bill collector.

So yeah, I don’t know. I just want to write dumb shit for people, brighten someone’s day, and fill my evening hours with rat-a-tat prose and the clackity-clack of my keyboard. I also take lots of photos on my travels that just sit in my photo app gathering virtual dust. I feel like people should see them. I was a professional photographer once, so there’s some skill involved here. I’ll also be sharing behind the scenes updates for my literary journal, Five South. If that’s something you’re into, you should subscribe. And if you’re feeling frisky, buy me a coffee.

See you next week. ❤️