Yesterday I re-started working on a novel I have been trying to rip out of myself for about a year now. The story is there, the characters are there, the wit and comedic banter is there, but the ending is nowhere in existence. I suppose its not ready for the end just yet, but its almost as if I think that I need to know the ending in order to have the story working toward something. Clever foreshadowing, some sort of meaningful magnitude of “why” being resolved. I don’t even know if the ending will be happy or sad. This is probably a big problem. All I know is that I refuse to have a whiskey-dick of an ending. All that anticipation and excitement leading up to, well… whaaa whaaaw. Poor little fella.

All of this fret about an ending really got me thinking that this writing process of mine is probably perfectly reflective of this life process of mine. (I know what your thinking, and leave the whiskey-dick analogy alone at this point. Yes, you’re very clever, we all agree, now leave it alone and try to keep up.)

Trying to enjoy the present and not get ahead of yourself, all caught up in the future in your head, is something people talk about a lot. YOLO and all that, but I am not quite sure its entirely possible. There are big beautiful moments that you get lost in that make you forget about everything else, past, present and future, but the rarity of these moments are precisely what makes them important and memorable. If you live your whole life for each individual instant without thinking of future consequence, without at least considering the end game, you are probably pretty selfish, probably on a lot of drugs or probably both. No judgement here. It may not work for my life, but it might make for an interesting story.

Then comes the big question: If I don’t know how it ends, why keep going at all?

Why keep going through the painstaking process if, in the end, it could all be just… whaa whaaw? I’m terrified, and rightfully so, it’s terrifying. I’m sure most “creative” individuals (basically the artistic way of describing someone without a 9-5, but still considers themselves to be working) are terrified.  To be honest, it’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a long while. I actually can’t remember the last time I felt it.

As a little worker bee in the system, I was numb to most of these terrific feelings. I felt more rage, confusion and complacency. Money will make you put up with a lot of weird shit that no one seems to think is weird at all. It’s all so weirdly normal. Now, I realize that this terror probably means freedom. It probably means ambition and it probably means that any other emotion that comes my way on this journey to a dream and to an ending is genuinely part of my artistic self that needs embraced.

Those big beautiful revolutionary moments that make you forget… those are probably more important than the ending. They can be endings all on their own…probably.