Hello, dear readers, whoever and wherever you are.
I again take to the keyboard sneaking some time out of a low-key weekend work day for putting some thoughts down electronically that no one may ever bother seeing. After another mid-morning silent self-pity party, I felt the need to place my cards on the table about a subject often irritating me. That would be the frequent, friendly admonitions usually but not always from those more fortunate than me, the people who got married, had a family or achieved their hearts' desires in this life. To those people and anyone reading here, I am tired of being told how I should be more grateful of my current circumstances living every day, and that I do not have the great adversities or trials others endure that threaten body and soul to despair.
That may be so, but even though I can feel brief bouts of empathy for those in distress or suffering some hardship, the hard shell of self-pity remains and soon reinforces itself against any care of the outside world. It's just the way I am and have always been through a remembered lifetime - oh, poor pitiful me (as someone I know has condemned me for behaving that way more than once). I don't count the blessings God has given me because mundane everyday survival seems almost trivial and insignificant from me perspective. Yes, I could be fighting some terminal disease right now,but (so far as I know) I'm not. I could be facing homelessness or other dire consequences, but am not yet. I could've lost far more close loved ones over the years than I did. Yet, despite all the bad things that never or yet happened to me, I'm told I should be grateful I woke up and lived another day?
Almost eighteen years ago, I had my personal salvation experience after praying the prayer one Monday morning to God and Jesus Christ inviting the Holy Spirit into myself and know that spiritual baptism occurred shortly afterward the same day. I began my current quest to become a fiction author that day, unknowingly to self at that point, starting my first novel more than a year later with some false starts until finally getting the future manuscript for The Nightmare of Aarontown started on the 10-month odyssey of completing my very first completed draft by June 2000.
But since then, with each failure reinforcing an already low self-opinion and an utter sense of futility in ever becoming professional, the ambition God placed within me (having never displayed much ambition for writing before 1997) is dying out as I find it harder to persevere at the writing craft with each passing year that my work cannot find its audience out there. I may have started out in 1999 believing I could become a best-seller, now I would be content just to have a small following through which I achieved reputable cult-favorite author (perhaps with the popularity of such authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, L. Neil Smith, Clive Cussler or Orson Scott Card). Sadly even a minor popularity level is not possible for John X. Grey and it is crushing my soul.
So, I dread every day and the dawn heralding its arrival. I almost envy the dead their lack of burdens in no longer living. Had I accomplished something wonderful with my life, it would seem far more worth living. I guess my faith in God's will and purpose for my existence has been shaken more with each passing year of wasted efforts toward a would-be career I thought He had given me as a spiritual calling back in the late-1990's when my life had no purpose or direction. The world tells people to follow the dreams of their hearts, but at the same time that most dreams do not come true so you had better be practical about living a mundane existence and accept that fact. Living as I do, even with a job and circumstances I never asked for in my worst nightmares, life has no joy or charms for me. I pray for death often enough, never feeling gratitude I must live another day where my life seems stuck with no fulfilled purpose realized.
Don't post replies below telling me how fortunate I am even with all my yet unmet expectations, hopes and dreams. My answer would be "I envy the dead" every time someone scolds me for my depressed state of self-pity.
Sometimes, it almost seems to me as if God made me only to fail at everything. I wish that was not this life as I see it every - but that's my story and I'm sticking to it, dear reader. Have a nice day if you can. I cannot, ever.
I again take to the keyboard sneaking some time out of a low-key weekend work day for putting some thoughts down electronically that no one may ever bother seeing. After another mid-morning silent self-pity party, I felt the need to place my cards on the table about a subject often irritating me. That would be the frequent, friendly admonitions usually but not always from those more fortunate than me, the people who got married, had a family or achieved their hearts' desires in this life. To those people and anyone reading here, I am tired of being told how I should be more grateful of my current circumstances living every day, and that I do not have the great adversities or trials others endure that threaten body and soul to despair.
That may be so, but even though I can feel brief bouts of empathy for those in distress or suffering some hardship, the hard shell of self-pity remains and soon reinforces itself against any care of the outside world. It's just the way I am and have always been through a remembered lifetime - oh, poor pitiful me (as someone I know has condemned me for behaving that way more than once). I don't count the blessings God has given me because mundane everyday survival seems almost trivial and insignificant from me perspective. Yes, I could be fighting some terminal disease right now,but (so far as I know) I'm not. I could be facing homelessness or other dire consequences, but am not yet. I could've lost far more close loved ones over the years than I did. Yet, despite all the bad things that never or yet happened to me, I'm told I should be grateful I woke up and lived another day?
Almost eighteen years ago, I had my personal salvation experience after praying the prayer one Monday morning to God and Jesus Christ inviting the Holy Spirit into myself and know that spiritual baptism occurred shortly afterward the same day. I began my current quest to become a fiction author that day, unknowingly to self at that point, starting my first novel more than a year later with some false starts until finally getting the future manuscript for The Nightmare of Aarontown started on the 10-month odyssey of completing my very first completed draft by June 2000.
But since then, with each failure reinforcing an already low self-opinion and an utter sense of futility in ever becoming professional, the ambition God placed within me (having never displayed much ambition for writing before 1997) is dying out as I find it harder to persevere at the writing craft with each passing year that my work cannot find its audience out there. I may have started out in 1999 believing I could become a best-seller, now I would be content just to have a small following through which I achieved reputable cult-favorite author (perhaps with the popularity of such authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, L. Neil Smith, Clive Cussler or Orson Scott Card). Sadly even a minor popularity level is not possible for John X. Grey and it is crushing my soul.
So, I dread every day and the dawn heralding its arrival. I almost envy the dead their lack of burdens in no longer living. Had I accomplished something wonderful with my life, it would seem far more worth living. I guess my faith in God's will and purpose for my existence has been shaken more with each passing year of wasted efforts toward a would-be career I thought He had given me as a spiritual calling back in the late-1990's when my life had no purpose or direction. The world tells people to follow the dreams of their hearts, but at the same time that most dreams do not come true so you had better be practical about living a mundane existence and accept that fact. Living as I do, even with a job and circumstances I never asked for in my worst nightmares, life has no joy or charms for me. I pray for death often enough, never feeling gratitude I must live another day where my life seems stuck with no fulfilled purpose realized.
Don't post replies below telling me how fortunate I am even with all my yet unmet expectations, hopes and dreams. My answer would be "I envy the dead" every time someone scolds me for my depressed state of self-pity.
Sometimes, it almost seems to me as if God made me only to fail at everything. I wish that was not this life as I see it every - but that's my story and I'm sticking to it, dear reader. Have a nice day if you can. I cannot, ever.