I wrote this because I was angry, and tired, and furious, and animated.
Yes, this is an ode to fury and righteous anger and whatever else you would like to label under everyone else'’s favorite box of Instagram slogans they’d like to fire at you—yes, you; you are and I are not separated in this discussion, my friend, otherwise you would not be reading this right now—with the precision and recklessness and carelessness of a goddamn gatling gun.
But most of all, this is an ode to the people who were told they were never meant to be the MAIN CHARACTER by people who were too afraid to be the PROTAGONISTS OF THEIR OWN LIVES and would rather see you suffer irrelevance and inadequacy and pain and lost legacy than ever take the chance on yourself that they were too cowardly to take.
I used to live for everyone else.
My enemies. My allies. My loves. My old dreams that never had a place to be, but tried to find anchor, anyway, even when they didn’t belong anymore, and I was too weak to say: “No, I’m sorry, you did your time, and I’m grateful, but your place is no longer here, no longer with me, no longer in this life, in this world, in this space between.”
I lived and lived and died and died and revived and revived and I paid for it for it paid for it paid for it. Every. Time. They are seeds that grow and wither and die. They are seeds that planted potential. They are towering trees and blooming buds and roots tangled beneath the earth without the chance to eat.
I’ve witnessed brilliant women and men alike serve others for the majority of their childhoods, only to burn themselves into ash the second they try to actually pursue what they want to pursue. I have listened to the cries of the trapped and the furious ARTISTS and MAKERS and BUILDERS as they wail against the bonds of self-inflicted pain, desperate for change, desperate for escape. Desperate but lost. Lost and racked with too many thoughts to realize their internal forests are barring them from the ocean they seek.
I’m confessing to you as a WITNESS and a PARTICIPATOR. I am not telling you this as a stranger, because we’re not. We’re not really strangers, because all people who go through this understand it so deeply that they have no choice but to LOOK within the EYES of the TRUTH and remark: “Oh, fuck, you, too?”
I have trapped myself and I have pursued. I have failed and I have gained. I have lost and I have triumphed. I have suffered and I have lived. I have been happier than ever in heart and soul while suffering in the prison of flesh and bone.
And you?
What are you, my stranger-friend? Are you lingering in the depths of hollow decisions and intentional soul bankrupting? Are you waiting for someone to save you while you carve your way through the OCEAN of INDECISION? Are you itching to act on the urge to make, create, think, develop, deploy, discover what you have always longed to embody, but were too afraid what you would do to disturb others’ stories in order to make it happen? Are you eager to act from a place of guilt, rather than a place of strength? Are you losing confidence because you truly lack confidence, or because you gave all your confidence to the side characters in your narrative?
Joseph Campbell waxes poetic about the Hero’s Journey. It fills the books of experts and professors who come after. The original course-creator cycle began with people who majored in fields of teaching that they didn’t know how to wield for themselves, and so they contributed to the professorial journey: learn, teach, learn, teach, learn, teach. No work of their own. No establishment of their own design.
You have likely learned this in your classes. The Hero’s Journey. Save the Cat. Literary systems and guidelines that help millions of writers and storytellers out there, but are a disaster to others. (Myself, included, but I’m no longer ashamed to admit this). You have studied it, too. Or maybe you haven’t. Only you could know about the truth behind that.
I learned these fundamentals—the weaving of the fictional hero in a tale of obstacles and woes and mentorship and saving the day, or the princess, or both—while rejecting them in my college years, armed to the teeth with the hunger to know, yet too stubborn to adopt what I had engraved into my brain. I was an English Literature major, what do you expect? I can now read with a critical eye and understanding of author intention most people don’t have, but with that educated strength comes the struggle of being aware of your IMPERFECTIONS, your INADEQUACIES, your DISGUSTING COLLECTION OF WEAKNESSES that make you identifiable as the artist, and not the critic… but at what cost?
The cost is overthinking. I know the answer. The cost is taking the habits you had to begin with, and transforming them into weapons of mass internal destruction. Destruction of the soul. Destruction of the heart. Destruction of the work you have always longed to pursue, but shelved, simply because you were too afraid to admit you really WANTED IT.
I’m convinced these teachings—well, mostly our response to it—are part of what make anyone and every artist and storyteller and person of strong individuality allergic to guidelines. Some thrive on them. They love being told what to do. They love being fed systems, and frameworks. Templates. Ideas. Thoughts pioneered by another.
But I look at these people and I get inspired to build my own. I long to create my own ideas. My own systems. My own frameworks. Or… no, that’s not right, either. You know why? Because I’m not focused on building those into systems. I’m creating work. A BODY OF WORK that is truly mine, and will always be mine. Literature. Brand writing. Fiction. Essays. Whatever the hell these are—oh, yes, THOUGHTSTREAMS. Because that’s what they are—not quite stream-of-consciousness, not-quite-anything else… and because I studied poetry and I’m not thinking about any of the proper systems poets use to create exceptional work, I would rather set my toes on fire than claim I’m a fucking poet.
It doesn’t matter what I’m creating. I am the MAIN CHARACTER of a BODY OF WORK that will function and thrive only through MY perspective and MY beginnings and MY losses and MY discoveries and MY changes.
This is the untold story people are suffering with. This is the truth no one wants to admit when they feel so hungry and tired inside. This is what so many artists crave and yearn to feel. They want to be remembered.
There is silence, and there is legacy. Some want to be private. I long for that, too. But I also long for impact. I long for my stories to reach millions. I long for my words to inspire billions. I long for my work to outlive me and outlast me and outlove any kind of loving or living or lasting that I could feed into it. I long for AI to wish it could copy me but never aspire to accomplish. I long for humans to hate and love my work, and have real opinions on why they work and don’t work. I long for the BODY OF WORK to be a creation of ME as the MAIN CHARACTER and the DECIDER and the INVENTOR and the VISIONARY.
You are the director of your life. You are the dictator. You are the inventor. You are the creator. You are the PROTAGONIST who has been told your entire life that you have no reason to love what you love and that you were better off serving someone else’s dreams instead of believing that your EGO actually has SOMETHING of VALUE to SAY.
You are a gift. Your work is a gift. Your perspective is a gift.
I am begging you not to waste your time on this precious earth worrying about everyone else’s journeys—worrying about being the protagonist of your own damned life wandering these folds of atoms and ideas and flesh—and to please, finally, for all that is out there and knowing, to assume your role as the MAIN CHARACTER in a life of your own design.
Once you realize this is the type of self-betrayal you have committed for too long, it will feel like a dam breaking. You will feel the floodwaters. You will feel the pain. You will feel the memories of people who doubted you. You will most of all feel your OLD SELF cackling, pointing, jeering. You will then have the opportunity to silence that bastard and watch them bleed out. Once, and for all.
And if everyone else wants to continue living as characters who are remembered only for who they were when they were alive, and never for the work they created in their short time on this earth…
That is their choice.
Not yours.
— Taylor Barnes.