I’ve had more than 20 jobs. That’s not including individual modelling gigs – that’s jobs I went to an interview for, laden with concealer and sensible hair, got offered a position, showed up for my first shift and somewhere later on, starting not giving a shit or conversely, caring too much. The longest I’ve worked for one company has been about 17 months; the shortest position was three hours. I was both a workaholic and the most uinconconsistent employee, ever.
School. Elementary offered me the opportunity to excel – to get placed in a gifted program, to help cute boys cheat on homework and to decide that it was hardly worth the social scorn to show intelligence. I closeted myself with books and math two years my senior, never getting skipped ahead like was suggested and ultimately planning to achieve failing grades, since it was the Cs that got you winks.
High school was more of the same. When I showed, I was obtuse and uninvolved, except in those studies that I naturally gained favour – journalism, photography, creative writing, math, physics, calculus, textiles. I dropped out twice before leaving finally without a diploma but with acceptance to a journalism program and four fashion design schools. I attended none.
College brought social and biological sciences, an A average. I didn’t go to many classes during the final two terms of my two and a half years – also dropping out. Then I attending three weeks of a work at your own pace program, and was told that I had to slow down to the class’ speed. Finito.
I can’t not read a book from start to finish, because I know that if I leave it for too long, two days, a week, I might never return to it. Movies, the same. Housework, similar. Crafts and textile design, I start and do not finish. I can’t even buy meat in bulk or steam an entire pumpkin for baking – I know myself and my inability to go back to what’s been left in the fridge for later.
Ironically, possibly, is that the only things I’ve commited myself fully to are life long deals – Isobel and tattoos. Ink will never wash from my skin if I become unendured to it, and Isobel will always be my heart-holder, even when my face is being beaten against a proverbial wall and I want to run far away from motherhood. I cannot and will not quit these things, because the topography they’ve given me – the stretchmarks, clouded eyes and marred skin – is the ultimate remembrance of what has been most important.
And so I sit here with warm little lappy under my perspiring hands – thinking of how to mold characters and plot into a novel that will be finished. I know me. I know the likelihood of finishing what would be at least my eleventh attempt at authoring a story is slim. I know limitations of self esteem, motivation and creativity hamper my narrative freedom.
But I also know that I will not feel as if I am a writer unless I write something not from my own past, without glib comparisons between my father and the devil. Without mention of dragons being chased.
And I know one other thing. Since being accepted into a group, getting to know some talent – some raw, some refined – I’ve changed, and feel as if words should come with poetry attached. As if I’m supposed to etch myself differently on this page. I have expectations of myself now and the posts I publish here – and it might be the ultimate fail because it’s changed how I was writing into what you get now, text poisoned with adjectives and conjecture.
And really? All I had to say is, I quit stuff and I think I’m failing, cuz I’m trying too hard, here.
