The ideal situation would be to make my living doing something I love for the rest of my life with no desire to ever retire from those labors. Only writing fiction has the potential to satisfy that unfulfilled desire in my perfectionistic mindset. However, it is also clear to me from 13 years and several months of bitter hard knock experience that I will never hit the right chord with anything I write to acheieve anything approaching best seller status or even cult-level popularity status as an author. I've made too many mistakes far too often in this quest for a life-long career and clearly destroyed my chances to succeed in the eyes of enough people already.
The main obstacle within is being an artist rather than a businessman or salesman - two things I naturally suck at in general. I'm just not the shameless self-promoter, even being criticized by two idiots at Absolute Write Water Cooler to the point I never visit there any longer. I don't have the time or the spare disposable income needed for any sort of effective self-promotion of what I write, and even if I did my ill-advised book giveaway last year (with a novel that needed more polish than I realized until too late) probably left a handful of folks with the impression I'm an incompetent writer who cannot produce a flawless fiction work if my life depended upon it. The professional ranks of book and magazine publishers (aka the Big Shots in the industry) have already decided through their many rejections over the years that John X Grey (or Edwin Haney or whatever his bleeping name is but who cares) will NEVER be a popular or even remotely great genre fiction author. Some probably will (as others have in the past) advise me to write about some other genre. I write fiction of the sort I'd like to reaad, not genres for which I'm rather unsuited to tackle and that will never change.
Just as I don't take sales jobs because I'm no salesman (couldn't sell a bucket of water to a person on fire as I sometimes jokingly admit), I'm not savvy with the business end of publishing. But those who are at the highest echelons of that particular business have already written off every effort I'm made at storytelling, considering me no different than what they perceive as thousands of other hacks wanting to become the next popular flavor of the month author. To them I'm a loser who couldn't ever make enough royalties to risk paying me anything up front. In effect I ad their rejections to the unenviable rejection received through my job from assholes contacted by telephone to be asked about taking surveys, total strangers I never see but they still hurt me just the same, and the opposite sex that has rejected me my entire adult life, or at least in terms of any woman I ever wanted to date or marry. I'm effectively a three-way loser - at work, in love and struggling to gain a would-be dream career. I'd be better off dead or having never lived at all.
On the upcoming calendar, the date April 25, 2013 will hold great significance to my wellbeing. It is the final day left in the 12-week period during which I could receive an answer from TOR UK Books regarding a science-fiction manuscript I sent them on January 30 or 31 for consideration during their open submissions offer. If they never respond after 12 weeks, I must consider my work has been rejected by yet another major publisher. In terms of major changes in personal fortune, I'm the unluckiest person I know. Sure, God seems to give me small miracles furthering my survival, but He does nothing miraculous in any major sense to improve my lot in life (toward furthering whatever He expects me to do for His glory). After April 25, I wonder if there'll be enough money left over from all my expenses versus the meager salary I earn to pay another month's rent on May 1. I have no expectation or guarantee there will. Maybe all I have to look forward to on this miserable world is the final defeat found in a Friday night date with a bottle of pills for ending the pain. Unless something changes for the better in my life (on this rotten fallen world ruled by Satan for the time being), I may have just written a self-fulfilling prophecy to avoid turning 45 years old.