Why Do Writers Do This?

My molars grind away like limestone under a glacier.

Last night, I scrolled till 12:02 a.m. Three hours. Gone. Just gone.

Daylight savings stole another hour of sleep. Four hours total. One sixth of a day. Gone. Count the days like this. Count the weeks. Count the months. You'll die having spent years watching other people pretend to live.

You wonder why there's a market for Adderall.

The neighbors are fucking.

I should be writing. Instead, I'm writing about writing while watching planes warm up on the ramp.

My back hurts. Not the I worked out kind. The real kind. My doc showed me the MRI last month. Called it occupational posture syndrome. Fancy words for you're breaking yourself for nothing.

That time in the Marines, getting flipped for my brown belt. Head slammed against the rubber. Brain rattling inside skull. Vision narrowed to pinpricks of light. Couldn't feel my fingers. Couldn't feel my toes. But I heard Get up, you pussy so I did. Concussed. Couldn't walk straight for three days. Still got that brown belt.

That hurt less than writing this damn novel.

My father drove taxi for 43 years. His right index finger curved permanently around a phantom wheel. The bone remolded itself to his job.

My fingers remain stubbornly straight. Undeformed by my so-called craft.

Amateur hands. Amateur writer. Amateur lover.

Current manuscript has some guts but needs a lot of work. Mind is mush from finals. From life.

I have to piss, but if I get up now, I might lose whatever thread of an idea was forming. So I hold it. Like a child. Like I don't know better. And N12345 just called.

I let it go to speaker. Not open for another five minutes. Gotta finish this.

We’re all fucked anyways.

You watch Netflix on your phone while taking a shit. You masturbate to your ex’s Instagram. You work jobs you hate. You take on debt from degrees that don’t pay you back.

That’s what fills the space between birth and death.

Nothing poetic. Just life kicking your ass.

Still you do it. Still I do it.

Not for craft. Not for art. Not for readers.

Because what else is there? Watch more Netflix? Scroll more Instagram?

Hit refresh again?

Write or don’t write. Your words change nothing.

Except you.

They change you.

And maybe that’s enough.

Or maybe it isn’t.

We’re all fucked, but at least this gives it a name.

The neighbors stopped fucking.

Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe I just stopped listening. Maybe they’re still in there, grinding, clawing, ruining each other, the same way I fantasize about being a writer.

Who fucking knows.