Ok, I’m doing this shit for reals

Sup bitches.

Ok, so today at work I pretty much spent all day reading this guy’s journal that he wrote while he was in jail. It was pretty sick and made the day pass very quickly. One thing I noticed, and had kind of already figured out in my daydreams of what life in jail would be like, is that when you’re stuck inside a cell all day, you don’t have much else to do but wait and work to better yourself.

While in jail, this guy took to writing everyday for hours on end, read a bunch of books of varying topics from philosophy, to economics, finance, war and was even trying to teach himself Mandarin Chinese. On top of that he regularly sharpened his chess skills by playing all the time against fellow inmates. It made me realize how I’m just wasting my life.

Right now I’m working fulltime. 40 hours a week, from 10am to 9pm (1 hour for lunch) Tuesday through Friday, I’m stuck in my cubicle selling health insurance over the phone. I hate doing it. Whenever I get back home from work all I want to do is smoke weed, play video games and have sex/masturbate (depending on the availability of sex). I don’t feel like I’m improving myself very much at all these days.

I made this blog, in part to better my writing skills (which I have been complimented on since high school), to vent (which I hesistate to do too often in fear of this becoming too whiny and too angsty of a blog), and to humor the possibility that maybe one day someone important will discover this, and I’ll become a huge sensation and get rich and famous and get all the blogosphere bitches (ala Waiterrant). Other than the venting thing, I don’t feel I’ve really met my goals.

I don’t necessarily think my writing’s regressed, but reading my old posts I feel like I was just funnier back then. Then again I always think my past self was more confident, funnier and smoother than my present self. I’m pretty sure I’ve always been this neurotic, self-conscious, and awkward and simply just forget about it later, which leads me to only remember the non-awkward past hence making me look like prince charming. But whatever, I don’t know.

What I do know is that now I’m motivated. I’m motivated to harness my intellect and live up to my potential. I’m going to force myself to making at least one post on here everyday. I’m also going to do my best to find my writing voice. I don’t want to be a good writer or even a casual writer. I want to be a fucking great writer. I want to leave my readers in stitches as well as make them realize something about their lives they’ve never thought about before. The difficult part about that is to do it in an original way.

We, as humans, learn by mimicking. It’s the natural way to educate ourselves. I remember when I was younger and watched Forrest Gump for the first couple of times, afterwards I was always speak with a bit of a southern drawl. I didn’t notice it. I didn’t even know until my sister told me to stop talking like that. It happens subconsciously. The same principle applies to a lot of things. After reading Chuck Palahniuk or Chuck Klostermann, you start seeing things as if it were through their lenses. Reading is amazing because it lets you see the world through the perception of someone else, and sometimes that perception is so much more appealing and interesting than your own that it sticks with you even after you’re done reading. I think that this simple process of perceiving, liking what you see and mimicking is how we all come to invent our personalities in the first place.

The thing is, no matter how many amazing authors you read, or how many amazing rappers you listen to, if you don’t practice yourself and find your own voice everything you do is just going to sound like a watered-down version of whoever inspired you. To truly find your own voice, regardless of the medium, whether ‘your voice’ is your writing voice, your sense of humor, your art style, you have to work your way up from nothing.

Listening to Eminem was what first inspired me to rap. I didn’t even listen to much music before hearing Eminem’s Without Me on the radio when I was 11 years old. When I first started rapping everyone told me I sounded like Eminem, and I was proud to be compared to whom I considered (and still do) to be the greatest rapper to ever live. Surely enough however, I grew tired of the comparisons. I still welcomed them and truly felt flattered whenever they were given, but I wanted to invent a completely new type of rap. Intelligent, nerd-humor, clever rap that doesn’t focus so much on how tough you are as opposed to how clever your punchlines are and your actual technique and lyricism. I feel that after a while I eventually did find my own voice (albeit, I’m still not completely satisfied with it, but I doubt any artist is ever completely satisfied with their work) that sounds separate from Eminem’s flow.

I need to do the same with everything else I want to excel at. And so, I am going to dedicate myself to becoming a better writer, chessplayer, starcraft 2 player and rapper. I’m going to be writing everyday, and playing only sc2 or chessmaster. I already can’t help but rap whenever I’m in the car by myself so I’m fairly certain my routine on that isn’t too bad.

In a year’s time, I want to be a much more impressive person than I currently am. I’m going to do it, too. Just wait. I’m going to be so goddamn eloquent and clever, I’m going to charm your fucking eyeballs out.

Hopefully, if I do so, I won’t be stuck in a fucking cubicle hating 4 out of the 7 days of the week for much longer.