Burning Both Ends of the Short Stick

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"New York City!" The bus driver calls out.

I am already awake, staring out of the window at Newark New Jersey for so long that I felt we would never escape it. Newark is like a fucking maze, twisting and turning streets with only one way out of the city and one way out of the state. If you don't know the precise route, you are doomed to wander around it's hellstruck streets for the rest of your days.



Newark, and New Jersey in general is the last place I want to be in. And with the constantly falling rain, I want to get out before I die here. Soon though we are on the stretch of the turnpike that leads to the Lincoln tunnel. The traffic into the city is amazingly heavy. It's like everyone in New Jersey works in New York. The bus wheels through it all in a bus only express lane, which is peachy to me. I watch New Jersey slip by like a heart attack victim  and I feel no remorse. I want it gone.



And soon it is. We break out of the Lincoln Tunnel in New York, and I can't get off the bus fast enough. I work my way out of the vehicle and on my way out I see a stunning blonde woman moving with the crowd of passengers. She goes to the bus driver and asks how does she find the buses to Massachusetts. I wanted to go up to her and tell her I'll show her because I lived here for nearly a year, but the thought of breaking such a truth to a woman as earthy and beautiful as she, was not going to gain me any points. Being homeless is not a good girl getter.



I watched her, lurking somewhat in a creepy sense of the word, as I got my bags and headed out of the terminal and into the subway. It felt good to be back in the New York groove. Fighting with mass transit and trudging with all of my luggage though subway cars and irate commuters all the way home. Coming into my room was a joy. It was so fucking spotless that I could eat off the floor and fuck off the ceiling. It was pristine clean and to walk into that is the best feeling in the world.



But one would think that I would have crashed the instant that I got home, but no. I undressed, got on the Internet, checked my schedules for next week and then rushed out the door again to go pay my cable bill, get ink for my printer, protein shake for my weakening muscles, prescriptions filled, and some light food shopping. I was in full effect, no longer forced in low mode because of my surroundings. Being where there isn't much to do is not all that good. It's better to be somewhere where you have a lot on your plate to keep you active and productive.



And with me, my life is filled and stocked with pro- ductivity. I write. Write like never before, and print out my query letters and short stories and I must have sent out a dozen things here and there, fulfilling my promise to myself to never allow anything that I have written to sit around in my home and gather dust.



I was watching a show about Hollywood screen- writers and the madness of making a movie in Tinseltown. They show over and over again how they wrote something like 36 scripts. Sold their 25th script that made it to a movie, then seven years later sold their 30th script and now they have six more, trying to farm out and have made into movies or television shows. This is not depressing to me though. It only proves to me that I am well suited for this. I write, not because I want to make money, although I do. I write not because I want the masses to read me, because I do. I write because I HAVE TO. It HAS to come out of my skull or it'll all explode in a bloody mess of gray matter and bone.



I have no recourse but to write and write a lot regardless of if some editor, agent or publisher gets behind me an sees it off. What this does do is allow me the opportunity to hone my craft, tighten my prose and become the author that I can be. Become the Writer that I know I can develop into. I just need to give myself a chance to do this and to succeed. That is the point of it all. That is the point of my life. That is the point as to where I am now in this existence of mine.



One movie screenwriter said that he was on welfare when he sold his first work. Another said that he was living with his girlfriend who was paying all of his bills. Another was a security guard, and so on and so on. My story is not unusual and my path is not unique. I am only doing what I am destined to do, working in a direction that I was born to work towards and before I had not the will to pay my dues. To work hard. To give it all that I got.



But I promise you now. I am ready, willing and able. I'm going to give it all I've got.

I didn't die in New Jersey. I guess I'm destined for greatness.

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