Yesterday’s brush with a motivational quote that speaks to me put me in mind of another one that more directly influenced my recent onset of brain fever, AKA throwing down the ink-gauntlet and declaring myself a writer.  Incidentally, the quote is from a band, which is double dumb on me because I typically profess not to get all wound up in the lyrics to songs.  In my defense, how can you?  I listen to the radio every day and wish I didn’t because the songs are so literarily (yep, I did it) barren that it hurts my English teacher brain.  And yeah, okay, I’m sure there are bands out there dropping crazy good poetry penned by angels, but I’m over thirty; I don’t have time to go hunting out new music like I did in my younger and more formative years.  Basically I turn on Pandora and let some music I’ve never heard and never will again wash over my subconscious.

But Pandora’s responsible for this, and I do enjoy Pandora.  I can count on one hand the number of full CDs I’ve bought in the last several years, and I need less hands than that to count the CDs I’m glad I bought.  I also just realized that I’m totally aging myself by referring to it as a CD even at this point.  Does anybody buy CDs?  What do you call it when you buy it online now?  An album?  Sharknado, I’m too old to care about the lingo.

ANYWAY.  AWOLNATION.  The caps are the band’s, not mine.  That’s the band and they’re responsible for the quote.  I don’t know things about music.  I can’t write about it.  They’re best known for Sail, which came out in 2010, and is not the song in question.  Ugh, I’m getting sidetracked.  This is not about the music.  It’s about the words, which are usually at odds with the music.  In fact with AWOLNATION I think the lyrics usually are at odds with the music, which may in fact be the point.  Blarg, there I go off the road again.

Anyway, they have a song called “Kill Your Heroes”.  The video for it is a crackup, riffing on good old Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and the message is brilliant.  The song as a whole isn’t bad either, but what really gets me is the line at the end of the first verse.

“Never let your fear decide your fate.”

This writing thing, for me, has been a thing that I’ve wanted to try for a long time, but well, I’ve always been afraid of failing.  Afraid that people won’t like what I put out there, that I will never find any measure of success at it, that it will be a waste of my time.  The fact is, those fears may be well-founded.  I may never have success at it, people may not like what I have to offer, and if that be the case, then it sure may turn out to be a colossal waste of my time.

But then, it won’t be, really, because I’m having an absolute ball just writing the novel and writing the blarg here for my audience of a handful (so far!).  And I may not come to anything, and in a few years maybe I’ll have burned out on this and moved on to some other crazy obsession (Civil War Reenactments have always fascinated me.  That’s not a joke.).

But at least this time, I won’t let my fear of the thing keep me from trying the thing.

 

1350 more words today, and the train keeps on a-rollin’.