Hello, firing squad.

So I've decided to start taking this writing thing seriously. While I search and wait for ways to get paid to write, it's crucial that I get back into the practice of writing, and that will happen by doing it without the pressure of trying to get paid. It's been long enough since I've posted an entry here that I'm fairly certain no one checks it anymore, which makes it a "safe place"...at the same time, the whole point of this exercise is to put something out there for other people to see. I don't know if that's good or bad—self-editing will be very necessary if (when!) I find work, which puts this at an advantage over a private journal or (cringe) diary. It has its downsides: 1) I feel restrained and unable to be perfectly honest and experimental, but 2) I have no trouble still being completely self-indulgent, because the purpose of a blog is all about self, anyway. Self-expression, self-promotion. In my case especially, self-pity. Verbal self-flagellation. Speaking of which...

I am coming to some disturbing realizations about myself. One is that I really wouldn't blame anyone who knows me for thinking that I'm all talk. I'm starting to think that myself. There's this writing thing I've been talking about for too long, and while I've got some plans, and some possible opportunities on the horizon, none are that "chance of a lifetime" that will surely get me started on my way. In fact, they could lead me nowhere and I could just give in to defeat. And I go on and on and on about how I'm moving away from here, once and for all, or how I'm going to take some crazy trip out of this God-forsaken country and have free-spirited adventures all my own, but still, here I sit in this cubicle, at the same company my mother worked at just before becoming a mother. Thinking, daydreaming, sometimes quietly crying. Watching my move money or my trip money vanish instantaneously each month at the push of a button, through the magic of electronic bill payments and paperless bank statements.

I am a perfect Walter Mitty. I remember not liking that story when I read it for school, and now I like it even less, because it's me. And I cannot keep going on this way.