“Turn your pagers to 1993”

– The Notorious B.I.G.

I recently found an entire box of my old notebooks in my basement. After reading through a few of them, I began to notice how differently my writing style and general interests have changed over time. Looking through my old writings I realized that I had become so far removed from some of the versions of me that it was like reading through a stranger’s thoughts.

The oldest book in the collection was from when I was about nine or so. The writing was atrocious and almost everything written was a blatant rip-off of something else. As I read the “stories” I had written, I could easily identify which summer blockbusters and horror novels I had stolen the plots from.

The second notebook that I read through was from around the time I was thirteen. It still wasn’t very good, but it was an improvement. The highlight of this was a massive hand written rough draft for my version of Red Alert 3 (at the time a third game hadn’t even been announced).

Surprisingly my ideas were actually pretty unique. While I still “borrowed” concepts from other games and movies, most of what I wrote was original. The difference between this notebook and the earlier one were night and day. Although I was by no stretch of the imagination a good writer, I was infinitely better than I had been.

The other two notebooks that I found were from high school. Both were incredibly inconsistent, at one point I wrote a bunch of lousy poetry, but still had some gems. There was a pretty campy story about a toxic fungus inhabiting marijuana buds that caused people to in die gruesome manners. It was like reading a cross between something concocted by Lloyd Kaufman and David Cronenberg. There was also a pretty good half finished detective story set in a retro-futuristic setting.

Reading through my old notebooks also reminded me of something I had long since forgotten. At each stage of my writing, I had believed I’d reached my crescendo. When I was nine I thought I’d become best-selling author of books that were essentially Stephan King knock-offs. At thirteen I imagined myself penning all the flagship titles for a major game developer. At sixteen I thought I was the next Michael Chabon.

Within the next three years I doubt I’ll still be writing Thirty Days To X. As much as I love creating new posts and doing monthly challenges, I’ll eventually outgrow it. And, quite frankly, that thought kind of excites me. I’m looking forward to the future and what I write in it.

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

– André Malraux

During my freshman year of high school golf a minor controversy erupted.* One of the older kids was allegedly seen cheating on a hole. Unfortunately, due to a lack of substantial evidence, he wasn’t punished. Aside from spending the rest of the school year as “the guy who cheated” nothing bad happened to him. He didn’t get kicked off the team, or die in a car wreak, or suffer from whatever other justices the universe is supposed to deal. Instead he’s still alive and doing well, exploiting easy routes suffering no repercussions.

One time I was partying with a girl and we got into a conversation about luxury items. She said something about never having to buy any of her clothes or jewelry or expensive alcohol, because there was always some dude willing to foot the bill. No flesh eating bacteria has left her disfigured, guys haven’t stopped paying her way, and she hasn’t died in a freak explosion. Karma hasn’t punished her, and probably never will.

There are thousands “average guys” who never get ahead. They put in their eight hours, do exactly as their told, and still don’t see any major rewards. Granted they aren’t suffering, but at best they’ll waste their entire lives to achieve nothing more than a decent paying job in a pretty good city. The ghost of Frank Capra isn’t going to slip them a winning lottery ticket, or give them a surprise inheritance simply because they showed up to work almost every day for fifty some years.

On any given Saturday night there are hundreds of thousands of men staying in to follow their dreams. Building businesses, programing, studying the economy, writing books, and doing countless other unglamorous tasks. They’re the type of guys who become “surprise” successes, going from nobodies to household names. But they didn’t do it overnight like everyone else assumes. They were hustling while the guy who always takes the easy route bailed from work at quarter to five. They were struggling and and toiling while the gold diggers were all Instagramming their free drinks. And they were finalizing their products and honing their skills while Joe average was shoving down IHOP pancakes with his obese children and diabetic wife.

There is no such thing as karma, only hard work.

*Details are not 100% accurate, due to the author’s shoddy memory.