Got up at 5 am to catch a bus to Banska Bystrica. I need to go and show my ID there, plus I need to sign a paper stating I know Slovak verified by a notary. That’s almost three hours of travelling, and this in the digital age where you’d think all these sorts of things could -theoretically- be arranged online. Or am I being too optimistic about the internet?
I’m in one of those yellow busses with attendants in pink uniforms. Soon a girl with a chiseled smile on her face will be offering me free coffee, tea, headphones, and something to read. I want none of that, I just want the nice horribly underpaid lady to sit in front, catch some sleep and leave me alone. I have something to read, I am recovering coffee addict, begone ye devil, and tea makes me pee which can lead to severe head trauma on a bus. In this toilet Tyrion, Robert Reich or a particulary big cat, can’t stand up fully erect.
Today I’m not sticking to the questions formula of this diary. I woke up worried. Am I wasting my time writing another manuscript? And what gives me the ‘right’ to write a novel in English? Who turned me into Philip Roth all of a sudden? Is my vocabulary nuanced enough? Shouldn’t I read more novels? I ran over to the small bookcase we have and threw White noise by Don DeLillo in my bag. My eyes caught one sentence of the blurp on the back and my brain went: aaaargh, THAT’s a novel, what you are doing is some mediocre page filler. It’s not even really bad and smutty. You can sell totally crappy, ridiculously smutty novels, there’s an audience for that, but who wants to buy something mediocre? Something that’s neither smutty nor high-brow, just a mediocre rag in between?
Zuzi doesn’t know whether to kick me or hug me when I get into one of these moods. I think the table is tilted towards ‘kicking’, but she doesn’t kick, she just shoves me on the bus with instructions to tackle this little red tape challenge we’re facing. Her approach towards life is far more down to earth than mine.
Here’s formula for happiness: measuring your happiness by NOTHING ELSE (!!) than the number of books you’ve sold in your life. A fucking weird reflex like that is so dictatorial within me that it could very well destroy me.
Zuzi says it’s such part of the moods I go through. At least it’s part of my writing engine.
After 20 minutes of bus ride I get an sms. She says she’s missing the hell out of me already.
At least she doesn’t feel like my moods are creating hell for her. An extra worry I often have.
If I’d count my happiness by counting tokens of affection, I’d quite likely be the happiest man alive.
Do you think the human mind has a natural tendency to focus on what is lacking and to discard what is given?
The Confessor 
There is definitely a tendency to focus on what is lacking. It’s the type of society to we live in, I think. We constantly compare ourselves to others. You are not wasting your time writing another manuscript. You are a writer and a very talented one. I go through the same moods, where I focus on what is lacking, where I compare myself to others, etc. It’s fear, I realize now and you have to push past that. And it’s a hard thing to do.
I loved this entry. It’s what the authenticity diary is all about it.
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Thanks! I realize more and more how hard it is to be truly open about what one goes through, I have the feeling we all have the feeling to present things a bit better than they are, or that we slice off a bit of reality and present that to the world, what I’d like to try is to get to ‘ultimate’ self disclosure and to openly show what I feel. I think until now I’ve never really managed to convey exactly how I experience my life, something always is erased or held back somehow or on the contrary made larger than it is. I think people really are like onions with lots of layers. Right, I have a confused state of mind today, clearly. Practically speaking: the name of this blog definitely needs to change, it can’t carry my name, I don’t want it to be about me, but about people’s struggles to live authentic life and if it’s named after weird people will be less inclined to share here. So what name do we pick?
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Well, since ‘be the change you want to see in this world’ is good advice, I’ve changed the name of this blog, I don’t want it to be about me. I hope to write something more general on the ubiquitous validation seeking in our culture. I wonder why we’ve turned into ‘pleeeeease look at meeeeeeeee’ people all of a sudden. I don’t remember it was anything like this in 2005. Though I think the rise of ‘social’ media doesn’t explain it, it just made it easier. Thanks for being a part of this. Looking forward to your two pages tomorrow.
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