Writing, like most crafts, has a romantic air about it that says that being a "writer" is something special: We drink a lot, have crazy promiscuous sex, and wander around the desert tripping balls and figuring out how to get rid of inconvenient corpses. Hell, just look at the daily routine of Hunter S. Thompson's utterly fabricated professional "character." But, for most of us, the reality of writing is sitting in front of a keyboard, usually sober, typing. Endlessly typing. There's no drug-magic, no sex-muse, and no special insanity aside from the one that makes us OK with sitting in the same dark room for 14 hours trying to figure out how to make a joke about SpongeBob's butthole "land." I wish I could live like Hunter S. Thompson says he did and just get wasted with a bunch of hookers and wake up to find brilliant writing waiting for me on my desk. But instead, I worked over the weekend and completely forgot to call my friends who were visiting from out of town.
I'm not just rambling about how time-consuming my job is -- teachers, doctors, and most single parents work a lot harder than I do. But they don't have those fucking T-shirts burning a rageful hole in their Facebook feeds. Taunting them with false promises of a glamorous lifestyle that they can never enjoy. Twisting a knife into the wounds of our sacrifice- ... Ah, shit, I'm going all "parched and thirsty" on you. Let's move on.
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