It happens every morning at 7:30 A.M. I open my eyes, look out the window, glance at the clock, stretch my arms, uproot the cat from her burrow in the blankets on my stomach. And then it hits, like a 4X4 swung by a forklift. Panic, gushing from my stomach into my sternum, spreading through my chest like an oil spill, finally slamming into my brain.
What.The.Fuck.Have.I.Done.
No steady job. No carved career path. No Mahogany-paneled office. No pre-tax employer-subsidized Metrocard. No six-figure salary, bi-weekly paycheck, 401K, health and dental with optional home and auto, pro-rated bonus, semi-annual review. No Thinkpads, breakfast meetings, secretary, Blackberry, business casual loafers, corporate cards, Power Point software, Outlook calendar. Concepts, items, gadgets you’re supposed to have, to do, to say, like everyone else. They’re at it right now, streaming out of apartment buildings, tramping down sidewalks, opening car doors, boarding trains, guzzling Starbucks lattes, packing into elevators, delivering pert “Good Mornings” to perky assistant office managers, marching down fluorescent-lit hallways to the free coffee dispenser, flipping through CNN and The Times online. While here I lie, a framed J.D. with a $100K price tag propped against the back wall of my closet. Burned bridges? I fucking napalmed them. Slapping a pillow over my face, I shut my eyes to stop the wave. It’s all wrong, everything is wrong, the sheer and utter wrongness of my existence clobbering me in the face until my vision smears and my ears ring.
At this point I sit up and throw off the blankets. True, I made a choice. And what did I choose? Trading in a lifetime of stability, propriety, steadfast capitulation, for heaping doses of doubt. Not to mention the self-loathing, that sticky, ego-eroding disgust that adheres itself to your psyche. “You’ll hate yourself 50% of the time,” says a writer I respect, “otherwise you aren’t doing it right.” I’m batting closer to 65%, so does that mean I’m ahead of the curve? And to top it off, your closest companion is the little voice implanted in your skull, injecting its liquid scorn into your thoughts, always ready to throw out a “You’ll never be good enough, this is a joke” or the ever-popular “Why the hell do you even bother?”
After a few minutes, the hysteria subsides, and I glance back at the clock. This morning, this day, my life is what it is. To my inner monologue: thanks for sharing, I can now begin the day fully aware, as always, of my own inadequacies. But they haven’t stopped me before, and I’ll be damned if they do now. So I get up, step into the shower, throw on some clothes, plant myself in front of my laptop, and start writing.