Alternate Designation: Failure Gonna Put Mo Hair On Ya Chest, Boy

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Of the three fluorescent lights in my work cubicle, one buzzes noisily. When an Info-Tech guy sits at my computer to install new software, they usually ask, “Doesn’t that buzzing drive you crazy, man?”

I start to laugh inside. Well, maybe it’s more like the chuckle of a sinister villain waiting for his plans to come to fruition. You see, I already know I’m crazy. But not like your Uncle Nick who sawed his car in half because his team missed the playoffs. No, my crazy is self-inflicted, a detachment from reality that most creative folks know all too well. Because reality says: the odds are stacked against you succeeding on a creative level. No matter what the field is—music, writing, painting, illustrating—we will most likely fail to live up to our expectations. I am presently part of that statistic, but I have come to accept this as unavoidable. To which I laugh again.

People throw around the cliché ‘glutton for punishment’ when it comes to those who try many creative endeavors without success. But this is only said because of our endless quest for fame and money. The two determinants of success convolute our collective arts, our whole creative process. They cause the natural inclination in people to try and market everything, so we can buy luxury cars, mansions, platinum toasters, have our face whored out on Spin and People. Because who the hell wants to dwell behind a desk plugged into a computer all day, working for a company that could replace us tomorrow?

While our culture caters only the creative success stories, that’s no reason to see it as defeating. It is the process and the production which should be the focus. We should be just detached enough from reality to keep being imaginative in our daily routines. No matter how many times it burns us. That is creative psychosis. That is why I ride into the cardboard sunset backdrop that’s staple-gunned to the wall. Because I can always get up and search for that real sunset.

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All things aside, I might sit in this cubicle until I retire. Or have a heart attack. Or get abducted by aliens. Whatever comes first. It’s just commute, work, commute, repent and repeat. But that’s the system. We gotta pay the bills and try to live comfortably. Realizing creative psychosis is not an overnight decision. It might take years in the work world to truly know that fulfillment won’t come through wishes, dreams, adherence to a self-help system, or even through hard work. While we know it’s always coming, opportunity has no set schedule.

The imagination that we fall in love with as children is the same one that has lets us down. I know I’m not afraid to admit it. People try to sugarcoat, to deny their failures, when there’s more knowledge in such than any record contract or book advance you could ever get. If my creative life continues like it has for another thirty years, then I’ll have an ego that looks like an old country screen door. Just a wiry spring keeping me from falling off the damn hinges. But as long as it holds on, then it’s fine.

In the end, nothing is conclusive enough to pledge full allegiance to, but I’d like to continue to expand this hypothesis. After all, I may just get lucky one day. Meanwhile, I know all of our failures will never kill us… unless it was a fission experiment that transmogrified you into extra-tasty-crispy chicken, but I digress. If you’re reading this, then you’re still alive to try something new, succeed, fail, whatever.

In truth, the process is never anything worst than annoying. Just like that buzzing fluorescent light. To which I answer the IT Guy’s question, “Nah, I deal with it.”