Posting to get page views for my new book, out now.
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I’m grateful to be alive.
Don’t check book sales. Don’t look at them obsessively. Don’t check Twitter to see if online famous people like it.
Don’t think about book sales. Did I fuck up promoting it before it settled into its Amazon page with the kindle and paperbacks linked. Fuck up and shoot my wad before its sales rank was counted. Lose my shot at a screen cap saying “#1 New Release in Dark Humor.” Does it say “#1 New Release in Dark Humor” now. Don’t look. No book charts this morning. I prayed looking at the front yard. Slowly and deliberately showered and washed my hair and shaved. Like the day after a coke binge and I’m never touching coke again.
I hate this part. Where you get your grade. Am I famous. Am I good. Do you like me. Do I have a chance at being an “author.” Not having to work. Attractive girlfriend. Maybe a kid. A family. Some respect. Would my books ever get written up in The New Yorker some day. Like people I went to high school with. Who if they knew what I do now it’d be like being naked on television, ice water dumped on my penis.
I’m not ashamed. It’s honest. I did my best. Whatever’s wrong with it’s from what I am genetically. Could have worked more maybe. But there’s your willingness and then your stamina. Health, mana and stamina bar. Mana is inspiration. Stamina is the ability to re-read your own shit for the ten thousandth time. Decide if it’s good enough for the book. Read it again in the book format and on the fifth read it sucks. But you have to get through it. If you can’t get through it you’re fucked if it doesn’t sell. You’re fucked if it does sell because now a lot of people have seen your shitty book. Don’t know what the health bar is.
I worked on it until I couldn’t look at it one more fucking time. If there are mistakes please don’t tell me.
People I went to high school with have editors. Can you imagine. Imagine being married. Having someone do half the housework. Pay half the bills. Look people email me saying can I edit your stuff and I tell them no. So I got no one to blame. Although these Twitter douchebags aren’t exactly Maxwell fuckin Perkins.
What I have is Angela. She said the new pieces were beautiful. Problem with her is she won’t pay half the bills. Also she’s in Portugal. I already asked can I get back together with you. She said, and I quote: fuck no.
It’s OK. I’m grateful to be alive.
Lot of burden to put on your self published collection of blog posts. Needs to pay you three times median L.A. Salary. Must be in top 0.1% of all authors. When it got me laid who cared about the money. But blogging’s irrelevant now. It’s a hair band once grunge came out. The word “blog” tastes like old cigarette phlegm and puke in the mouth of any woman and the new thing is “podcast” which is cash grab horseshit for people too lazy to write. After that “TikTok” which I understand is an art form you watch on mute to look at high school girls’ tits.
I went to a fancy rich people school which made me feel self pity about being raised in a normal if alcoholic environment. Not inheriting weird private islands in trusts. Also turned me in to a huge f*ggot, although that too was genetically foreordained. Made me the kind of person where utility workers on Twitter snipe that I don’t have calluses on my hands. Look man enjoy your fucking Schlitz and beating your wife. I’m a big pussy and that’s fine. It’s true, I don’t like office work– I liked being a farmhand, construction worker and warehouse goon even less. All work sucks and you’re allowed to hate both kinds. But we need civilization. It’s women’s fault.
I fucked up not writing for ten years. Wasted opportunities and atrophied talents and yes it’s all my fault but it’s genetic. Nothing was Hitler’s fault either.
Sad as it is it represents me. If it fails I fail. If it sells I’ll find some way to think that doesn’t matter. Good reviews– find some way to think those aren’t the real people, the cool people, the New Yorker people. And if it was in The New Yorker I’d find a way to pick up The New Yorker and think Jesus Christ this magazine sucks, and I’d be right.
You did a pretty good job. The best you could and the rest up to God. Can someone respectable say I’m good. Someone rich from New York. The father of someone I went to high school with. Need a Bennington College aristocrat from Swiss boarding school who’s half Hapsburg to crack their prognathous inbred jaw and proclaim that what I do is legitimate, substantive literature so I can be ungrateful for that too and start hating it. Anyway it’s OK to just be one of God’s mammals. I’m grateful to be alive. But when will Passionately Romancing Jennifer Aniston’s Meatflaps get in Paris Review.
delicioustacos 
Stop worrying about your performance and start focusing on writing your next book. After your tenth book is published, you’ll have a fair idea of the value of what you have contributed to society.
Podcasts are made by people too lazy to write for people too lazy to read. Talking out of your ass is much easier than writing out of your ass. But that’s just life on the internet. Our brains are fried. A paragraph of articulate writing is a herculean labor. We can only pay attention to jackasses talking over each other and the heaving heavy tits of teenagers.
I appreciate what you do anyway.
My music has made me 84 cents so far. The difference between me and you though, is like… over a decade. That, and the callus thing.
I wrote a great book in my professional field. Really innovative stuff. I’ve sold a dozen copies in a year on Amazon. Nobody knows me, and I’m not a salesman. Oh and I make half what you make, with “Master’s” degree debt. I’ve hardly noticed the quarantine. In fact I’m enjoying it more than normal because I don’t have to see my hateful boss, and can nap.
While writing my book, the backdrop was the lottery feeling, that it could happen but probably won’t. I knew it wouldn’t, but what else could I do, I had an important idea. But it’s not my place to be rewarded, I’m here to suffer. The book market is flooded by salespeople and bored homebodies with bucket lists. Value is determined by Oprah’s book club.
The main feeling though was importance. Every day I sat among the thinkers of history. Absolute self respect. What’s lasted is an impenetrable kernel of self esteem. I sometimes wallow, but I have a legitimate achievement that I could objectively recognize in the most warped of drug trips. This is living in poverty with dignity.
your writing is legit tacos, i’ve just come across this blog and binge read all the best of posts and a bunch of others, it’s the best i’ve read in a while. im no one in particular but im pretty sure if you just keep writing and producing youll be fine. im gonna buy your books even though im broke as fuck and stole every pdf on this computer
I think the health bar is for withstanding the critique, good and bad. Or maybe just being able to write anything at all in the first place, to keep producing stuff. I think I lack health, that’s probably my problem. All those stories just keep piling up in my head, swirling around like miasma. I can’t get them out. I envy you for being able to do that. Pretty sure it’s genetics all the way down there too. Whatever was the evolutionary advantage of being a huge ass procrastinator like me, though? Maybe the astounding imagination I seem to have for coming up with useless distractions also has a fringe benefit in some other, less maladaptive endeavor. Maybe I’d be superb at fly fishing or something.
Anyway I love reading your stuff, might buy the book.
nice porn bro
I know I’m innocent, sweet, on the job. That’s how they know me. Little 20 year old Freddie Balding. They call me Freddie Knapsack at work because I always kind of shuffle in with my Knapsack wide open. I’m messy like that. Shoes untied. If I had a nickel.
Little Freddie Knapsack. A cute name for a cute kid. All my coworkers, on the other hand, are women in their 30s and, if I may, past their prime. They probably all think I’m a virgin anyway, and I wouldn’t blame them. At 5’6”—though my core and chest are absolutely cut, the body of a young warrior, under all the polos—I may not be the most obviously sexually imposing male. My other assets are unfortunately hidden under my clothes too. My ass—shapely, firm, in attractive proportion to my legs—and, of course, my roach. I pack a decent punch downstairs. Nothing crazy, but enough, and more than women expect for my height. And not that I’m some progressive-pussy-type, embracing new body types and all that, I just think women make too much a fuss about height when height is good for nothing if you don’t have pure sexual dynamo, like me. I’m a sexual powerhouse. That’ll be important to note if you want to understand the events that followed. No, not one of those guys who sleeps around but doesn’t have his shit together. I deliver, and I make money. 7 girls waiting in the car for me right now. I hear cash registers in my mind. I finish wiping down the dining room tables, mind on the money.
And look how innocent I am. The woman I was training today (45) asked me what my favorite part of the job was. I said, “I really like serving people breakfast. I don’t mind it. But washing dishes can kind of be annoying.” I gave a bashful laugh like I had told a joke. She laughed in return, that “how adorable” laugh middle aged women can give to young men. It can be emasculating, but it’s exactly the image I want to maintain at work. Keep the money rolling in.
I throw my rag down, grab my keys and head out to the parking lot. We serve a lot of rich guests, so nobody thinks much of the shining new Mustang I hop into. 7 girls are jammed inside—they’re all sweaty, hot from being locked inside a car all day. I let them air out.