Looking Back

Every so often, I perform a bit of self-exploration and examine my errors. I don’t mean I engage in self-flagellation. At this point, that would be childish and reductive. I instead consider my actions and inactions and the consequences of those actions.

Why am I bringing this up?

I’ve been dancing around this subject for a month, and if I don’t get it out, it’s going to drive me bug fuck crazy. Several years ago, Jebus, more than a decade ago, I worked in the Role Playing Game (RPG) industry. It was a fascinating, if frustrating, experience. I give that period of my life the credit for starting my fiction writing career.

Yeah, LOL, I make so much money as a writer. Can I call it a career?

At any rate, what I want to talk about is bittersweet. When I was thirty-two years old, I got my dream job, and I completely shit the bed.

I won’t go into detail about the incident. If you know me, you already know the story. If you don’t know the story, you don‘t need to know the details.

Before we get to the bullshit, let’s talk about the good things that happened during my stint with the company. The man who owns and runs the company became a genuine friend and was there for me during some of the early drug problems we had with Stephen. I expanded my abilities as a writer with skills I still use to this day. Finally, I made friends that I still have to this day.

Those were good days.

Now for the bad.

I turned in a project I’d been working on (with my then-writing partner), and the publisher/editor shredded it. I was hurt, and I was mad. I still think those feelings were, to a degree, justified. The fact is he’s an old-school professional publisher/editor and that’s how they did things back in the day. It wasn’t malicious, as I thought at the time. It wasn’t to steal my ideas, which I shamefully thought at that time. It was just look. All he wanted was the best I could produce. Nothing more and nothing less.

He wanted only the best I could produce, nothing more and nothing less. He was a professional, and I was not.

And if I'm going to be honest, the book needed A LOT of work. It was my first major work, and like all brand-new authors, I thought it was great, but in reality, it was really bad.

What was not professional were my actions.

I freaked out. I quit my job. I went into a depression that lasted months. I vented my anger online, but, like the fucking coward I was, I never had the balls to talk to him directly. I was a thirty-two-year-old unprofessional brat, and I showed my ass to anyone who’d work.

What caused my reaction? Was it my lack of maturity? Was it the fragile ego of a nascent author? Was my it completely untreated bipolar disorder? Maybe it’s one of those things, but tell the truth and shame the devil. It was all of them combined.

So, the truth is I was a fucking mess, and in the end, I lost my dream job and my friend.

And that’s the story.

Thank you for listening (i.e., reading) to my story, and I hope you don’t judge me too harshly.

- Josh (09/15/2024)