A Writer's Life

I envy him sometimes. He gets to say he did it all; he was poor and he lived a poor writer's life and he got to be a travel journalist, living the life of a cool loner with a bad boy exterior. He got to travel on his motorcycle, be that guy that meets people and chills with them sporadically, turns strangers into housemates and bed buddies and friends. 

While I hate being poor, and my short foray into that this summer, for the month that I charged things to my credit card and lived on my savings was short and not that awful. I wasn 't cut out for being poor and I know that romanticism is but a dream; things look and smell and seem better than they are. Romanticism is when you wish you could be somewhere and when you get there you realize it ain't what you'd like it to be, or what it should be. 

But he gets to say he did it. He is living the writer's life. 

There are times when I think, and I have to remember that it's all romanticism, but sometimes I feel like I wish I could roll in it. Roll in the poverty and press my fingers to the dirt of living to the bone and smear it under my eyes like a naval hand would smudge coal in preparation for war. In that way he gets to wear war paint, and I can really never say I did. 

Except when it comes to soul searching. That I can say I've reveled in. I've run from it like running from the rain and in the end it caught up to me and I had to wade through morass after morass. In that way I can say I might not have smudged war paint on in preparation but have scars to show for the battles I've waged and won.