I’m having a bit of a psychological debate with my psyche. Have you ever done this before? I have done this many times:

I get the idea that I should make progress toward a goal.

I go read some motivational shit online.

I get excited for ten minutes.

I spend three hours reading posts about how to do better in life.

I wonder why the fuck everyone seems to know everyone in this motivational blogging business.

I criticize myself for being cynical.

I fantasize about giving motivational talks about how I changed my life and became financially independent through writing.

I write a few paragraphs about my goals in life, but they’re really about what happened today.

I stop and say, “Shit! I spent all day reading about how to write myself to financial independence and all I’ve written is some shit about sitting on a bench in the park and anyway all of these fuckers know each other and suck each other’s dicks.”

Then I feel terrible again because they seem like nice people who are happy to know other nice people.

One time i attacked this guy with a blog post. I had zero followers and commented on no one’s posts. It wasn’t that I didn’t think anyone would see it, but I just didn’t give it much thought at all I guess. He was striving to inspire people with his life goal of being a dentist and how he was going to reach it and he was the president of his class or something and always had something positive to say. And I went on his website after one of these motivational blog reading benders and he was just this nobody with a thousand followers or something who was just doing his best to inspire people and create positive change in the world and I just couldn’t believe this mother fucker had any readership because to me the shit was lame and terribly written. And I was like fuck it, I’m going to make my name tearing these motherfuckers down. It’s what I do best.

So I wrote a post about how fucking stupid his site was and no one saw it. And then an hour later my blog had 30 views, which was 30 + infinity times more than my average readership and this guy responded to my post that his life coach or something had told him he would have haters and that’s how he knew he was doing the right thing or some shit. Well, I felt pretty bad because the poor bastard was obviously a good person and making a more positive impact on the world than I was or am and I still hated that mother fucker for making cliches even more cliche than they already are and now the mother fucker had seen me say that I hated his ass all over the internet for no good reason. Just found this mother fucker out of nowhere. I still remember his name, the bastard, he’s probably the head dentist at We Fix African Kids’ Problems Dot Org. God damn it.

But yeah I wish that mother fucker well, I really do. He deserves to be happy, that fuck, because he is a nice person. I knew he was a nice person even when I was trashing his work. When he commented on my shit I hit him back and asked him how to do some technical shit on my blog because I knew he couldn’t resist telling me. Mother fucker wasn’t even mad, I knew he wouldn’t be.

At the same time, I was impressed by how many hits I had accumulated in like five seconds. That shit was a big deal to me then, and truthfully that shit is a big fucking deal to me now. Fucking hell, I get three hits in a day and I’m dancing on ceilings. And that’s how Chris Guillebeau drew me into the god damn inspiring ass manifesto reading tornado this time. He was talking about not letting your up and down days (in the stats) affect your mood so much and how he can’t help doing it even though he tries not to. And he was saying his self worth is interlaced with how much shit he gets done and he doesn’t know if that’s the right way to do life but that’s how he works so fuck it. And I thought that shit was useful as hell so I read all of his shit and he was even talking about this lame ass phone game he was playing that he got addicted to and how he thought about making life like that video game. It was some Clash of Clans type shit but the game consumed his life for a week and he had to uninstall it, just like me.

But god mother fucking dammit these mother fuckers are so close knit and I don’t know why that pisses me off. Of course they would be, they’re like minded people at the top of their profession. Ah fuck, I’m just full of darkness that I won’t let go of. That’s why I read all that shit they write, because I know it’s right and I should do it.

I was getting to the point I was thinking fuck it I’m going to use my real name and cut out the cursing so my parents won’t be scandalized and I’ll just be clean cut and write funny, inspiring shit and I won’t have to go wait tables any more. Sometimes I want people to cut the shit and just fucking tell people we’re all fuck ups, waiters and shit. It’s a fucking tragedy to see the personalities that get swallowed up in this profession. Some of us are only a couple steps down from Louis CK, the kind of comedic talent we got. Some of us are only a few steps down from Sartre with our philosophical meanderings and writing and shit. Some of us are great interpretive dancers but no one even knows the greats of that bastard art so they get fucked just like the rest of us ‘almosts.’ And there we all go looking stupid all night taking orders and bringing down the house with our cynical charm.

And then you have meetings. Mother fucking meetings before dinner starts and the lifers tell you they’ve been doing this a long time and it takes skill to do and it’s a worthwhile profession. They tell you that we’re creating peace around the world, that we’re a part of what’s right in the world. And they mean it, they’re not bullshitting, they feel that way and they want to make sure we’re not all going to jump off a bridge somewhere because we’re rich enough not to struggle and smart enough to know we shouldn’t be wasting our lives knowing the difference between a serviette and a napkin.

Yeah so I was thinking I’ll use my real identity. I’ll own up to some shit, and cover up the rest. I’ll tweet and connect and reach out. I’ll write a book and I’ll sell it and I’ll retire to Bedlam.

Fuck that. But I meant to end this on a positive note. Well, shit, I’ve still got half a bottle of Evan Williams and the wolves aren’t at my door yet.