As I sit here trying to calm down, relighting the incense, and feeling the burn of a mostly-finished glass of bourbon in my throat, I think to myself, “Why didn’t you click save when you wrote this post the first time?”
And also, “Is this really what you thought life would be like?”
Right now, I’m flustered, sitting up here in my garage apartment alone, trying to re-write thoughts I’ve already written, watching the incense burn down once again, and the thoughts aren’t the same. The flow is gone. The words have changed. The passion absorbed by frustration, and the desire clouded by “I should probably just go to bed.”
But I’ll write.
Yuh see, when I moved into this apartment, I was chasing one of my heroes, so I thought. Donald Miller is his name; Blue Like Jazz is his fame. I moved here with goals and dreams, wanting to be just like this hero of mine. I wanted to live above where cars slept, work a day job that allowed me to save my creative juices for writing sessions in the morning and at night. I wanted to become a published author by the age of 28. That’s what Don did, breaking into the New York Times Best Seller list at a super ripe age. He could do it, why couldn’t I? After all, Don and I are similar guys. We’ve practically lived the same sort of life, both intentionally on my part, and unintentionally.
I too moved away from my Bible-belt buckle of a hometown to the great Pacific Northwest to get as far away from the culture I grew up in as I could. I too left with questions about Faith, what the world looked like around me and why a Coors Light was enough reason to be sent to the Place They Don’t Serve Breakfast In (that’s a Newsboys reference for you kids at home). I too was a player, having gone through my fair share of relationships and leaving a trail of destruction in my wake. I too was a writer, a storyteller and a guy who tried not to take life too seriously. Aren’t we the same, Don and I?
Except I got a day job that allowed me to save my creative juices for writing sessions in the morning and at night, but I haven’t been very good at using those juices. Except I’m not a published author, and I’m definitely not anywhere close to selling anything in New York. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure I still have the same sort of boldness for adventure I once had that would take me to New York on a whim of Faith that I once learned from my hero.
It feels funny to write (and rewrite) these words at a table that I’ve written thousands of other words at. Words that have always been full of hope, honesty, transparency and aspiration, but are now outnumbered by thoughts that are full of doubt, fear and uncertainty. Is what I really wanted only going to amount to that? I’d like to think not.
These days are the days when it feels like I’m becoming less of a person I’ve been chasing and more like someone I’ve been running from. Finances are tight, words are few and winter is on its way, dragging a looming number 29 right behind it. But I’m writing.
Writing.
And while the incense is nearly gone and the bourbon long gone, the words are not. They will someday turn into a page, and hopefully, that page will turn . . . into something I’ve been chasing for a long, long time.
Cheers to the heroes.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Chase a hero, you might not catch em’. Heroes are fast; that’s why they’re heroes, and that’s why they’re worth chasin’.