How To Be A Struggling Writer

Wake up early. Go back to sleep for 5 hours until it’s early afternoon. Aimlessly look for jobs online. Think about applying until they ask for a cover letter. Check your credit card balance. Check your bank account balance. Wish you were better at managing your money. Wish you made more money.

Think about cutting your nails. Decide to wash the dishes but put it off to keep looking at the Internet. Think about how you have been meaning to vacuum your apartment for at least a month and still haven’t. Wonder if you never vacuum it if it would soon just be a sea of cat hair, cat nails, cat litter, and crumbs.

Smoke weed. Go out to pick up provisions at the Hispanic market across the street from your apartment. Almost get hit by the urban drivers who don’t stop. Be unsure how to respond to the clerk’s extensive small talk about your day and weekend plans. Smile at but avoid eye contact with the older man behind you in line who keeps trying to get you to buy his two beers.

Try to write. Get distracted by things online. Try to read. Get distracted by things online. Look at Facebook and feel numb and vaguely sad about all the pictures of happy couples getting engaged or married. Check your ex’s Twitter to continually remind yourself how much you dislike him. Aimlessly look at OkCupid profiles and think about how most men will lead to aggravation or disappointment.

Tweeze stray hairs from between your eyebrows. Wonder if you are getting gray hairs on your temples or if it’s just the way the light reflects. Write something but get distracted and don’t finish. Try to draw inspiration from submission calls but get discouraged and don’t finish.

Wonder if you have ADD. Wonder if you’re depressed. Google “psychological addiction to marijuana” and read message boards with comments from disturbed people and people who smoke way more weed than you do. Wonder if you should date your coworker with the same music taste as you and then wonder if he might be gay. Decide to just be friends.

Think about how the world may not end in your lifetime after all. Wonder if your cat would start eating your body if you died. Wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe and think about how you’d have to call 911 or just die in your sleep and there’s no one around except strangers in their adjacent apartments to help you.

Respond to texts from your father and mother. Think about how you haven’t brought your cat to the vet in a while and hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with him. He seems fine but you never know. Have chest pains and wonder if you have a heart problem. Think about sending emails to the famous people you vaguely know in person or online who can help you, but more likely they can’t help you or won’t respond. Think about messaging strangers for jobs. Think about becoming some sort of sex worker like a webcam girl for extra money, but then get discouraged at how much work it seems to be. Think about donating your eggs but do research and feel queasy at the thought of injecting yourself with needles all the time and figure you would fail the drug test if there actually is one.

Stay up too late on weeknights because you know that as soon as you wake up your time is theirs when you go to work. Be too tired to do anything when you come home except smoke weed and watch old episodes of Frasier on Netflix. Look at your thighs in the mirror and wonder if you’ve lost weight. Eat an entire roll of cookie dough over the span of three days and feel like your arms are almost instantly fatter. Feel like the laziest person in the world. Pick dead skin off your heels. Think about how it’s getting colder already and you didn’t seem to do anything this summer.

Write in imitation of writers you admire, because that’s what they did too.