No Man Behind the Curtain

I can remember writing one of my first stories, “The Puble Shoe.” Co-written, to be fair, by my first and most ultra best friend ever, M. Krueger. We laugh about my misspelling of “purple” to this day.

Later in life I began to tell campfire tales to friends while we swung on the patio swing shadowed in the vines that enclosed it. My first being something about a green glowing demonic power transformers. (I was as weird a kid as I am an adult.)

I have no doubt you are currently shocked that I graduated with high honors in creative writing. That degree also gave me a unique enough perspective that I became the most cherished group mate, for anything that involved written finals, during my MBA program. (None of them could write for shit. Sorry guys, you know it’s true. Don’t take it so hard because remember: I desperately needed your accounting skills.)

I think I might be really damn good at telling stories. Fuck knows I’ve been telling myself stories for a long time. So long. So so so long. I’ve been telling stories from the minute I was born.

I have been reading a book titled XXX XXXXXXXXXX XXX XX by Anonymous JonesSmith. Wonderful read for my current book club. Anticipating 3.5/5 from me. A couple tweaks would have pushed it into a 4/5.

At one point the author claimed that all books main characters have protagonists who are inherently good. I focused on this a little too much (need to discuss this with book club,) because not all protagonists are good. Some protagonists are evil. Some protagonists are neutral. Some protagonists are unknown, searching for themselves, trying to figure out who the hell is good and who the damn is evil. Protagonists are fucking complicated, man.

Oh… hey… bytheway,

aren’t I the protagonist of my story?

How often am I making myself the good guy?

How often am I actually the bad?

How do I need to look inside my mind’s eye?

Stare into the void and just cry?

*Cough cough* Sorry, I had a little poem in my throat.

I haven’t been writing much lately, I’ve had a little writer’s block. My story hasn’t felt like it’s going in exactly the right direction. It got kind of bad and I struggled to eat, I struggled to sleep, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who was the protagonist. If I could just figure out who the protagonist of my story was…

Here I am getting all upset that a book is claiming that all protagonists are good and I know perfectly damned well that protagonists are complicated as H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

I have always wanted to live off the assumption that I am the good guy of my story. I know that life can be complicated. I know that from some people’s perspectives I am the bad guy. I kind of forgot that sometimes I have to be the protagonist... to myself too.

Of course I also did my emphasis in business ethics. Whoop, here goes the brain: Am I being genuine to myself? Am I accepting that I can be the bad guy only because that’s exactly what the good guy would do? Am I hiding behind the façade of a bad guy that no one else sees?

Fuck off ethics. My brain is tired. I need to stop telling stories for a minute. I’ve just needed to give myself a good gods damned break.

I’m so grateful to all the people in my life that are looking out for me. You know who you are… because you’ve got my back. Never forget that I have yours too. (Even when I have a tiny tiny meltdown.)

To all of my, gorgeous, dozens of dedicated followers, don’t you worry: I’ll be back to writing soon. I'm eating again, I'm sleeping again, (whispers behind the back of my hand: I'm taking my medication.)

I think I’m finding my happy.

Now go, get on, get out of here. Go read something way more interesting than this. Treat yourself, cousin.