Midnight
It’s midnight and I’m not the least bit tired. For the past while I’ve been staying up well past four in the morning, and I’ve got a fair amount of caffiene in my system. I tried to write on a pad of paper today, but I’m finding myself less and less capable of putting words on dead trees. There’s nothing moral about it; I just find typing more convenient. I’m better able to keep up with my thoughts when I type. I’m less critical, writing as I go, rather than trying to craft sentences that are, each of them, perfect.
I think there’s some draw for me, too, knowing that there is an audience for the words I put here. I’m a show-off. I like it when people pay attention to me, send me praise, let me know that my words have in some way left and impression on them. I have a selfish desire for an audience to perform in front of. This is apparent at my work. Give me a crowd, and I will tell them things that I might not tell a single individual. Give me a crowd of pretty girls (or even semi-pretty girls - this is a game store, I understand the limitations of the venue), and I become a dancing monkey, tossing myself about my makeshift stage.
There is a story in my head, that isn’t even really so much a story as a concept for a story that I might write someday. It’s about an artist (in my head, it’s a writer, but I know that too many writers write stories about writers, so he’ll probably be a sculptor or something) who feels compelled to act the part of the “tortured artist,” when really, he feels just fine. He’s confident in his work, he’s confident in its reception, and he knows he can live off of his art for the rest of his life. He at first fights against the image of the tortured artist, but as pressure mounts from the people around him, he slowly adopts it, all the while fighting against his truly cheery nature. In the end, he realizes that wearing the mantle of the tortured artist tortures him, and it stoped being an act a long time ago.
It’s funny, in my head, but not a comedy.
