Do you ever imagine your life as a series of quotes from the back cover of a book read about whatever mundane thing you have going on recently? The praise or subtle criticism about the course of events that have led you to end up sitting in the same café on the same corner for the fifth day in a row, wondering why it is you're sitting there again, why you're thinking of your life in back cover quotes, why exactly you're doing anything—or really nothing—at all in that particular moment? I don't really entertain notions of being well-known or recognized for the creative work that I produce, but I entertain thoughts like that. Those thoughts are fueled by any number of things, but often it's the idea that perhaps I do write decently, a recognition that I'm essentially incapable of being creative otherwise, and the incessant voice of family and others close to me telling me that I should "think about doing something with that", i.e. writing a book or starting a column or, god forbid, doing freelance work. I'm unsure of how realistic the idea of writing a book proposal based on the experiences of a somewhat idealistic and naive gay boy from a mountain state who happens to travel infrequently and chose to live in a poor country is, but I do know that that's exactly what it seems like these "boosters" are intent for me to do.
On the one hand, I understand that family and friends are there to be your cheerleaders, to fib to your face when they say things like "Oh, your writing is really funny all the time!" even when you have posts that are more ramble than chuckle, "No, I didn't hear anything! Someone came over?" even when they were listening to their music with sound-canceling headphones in when that Brazilian man came over, "Your food is delicious, you're such a good cook!" even when you cook something that may have been beyond its actual expiration date and not just the one labeled on the packaging, and so on. On the other hand, I laugh at the idea that there are actually people in the world who have the same level of idealism as I do with none of the jaded cynicism that keeps me in check somewhere in the middle as a pragmatist. The reality of the situation is that I hardly garner the interest of the 400 or so people who I have as friends on Facebook, much less the unknown individuals who look at my photos on Instagram or the things I may happen to post (infrequently) on other outlets of the internet. I get excited when my posts reach 30 unique page views. I have no idea how that would translate into a book. I cringe at the idea that my thoughts, which flow freely, if in excess at times, would suddenly require a deadline. The surest way to kill my creative process would be to put an externally-imposed structure on it, as the whole point of this blog and my writing in general is that I am in complete control of it, and it is my main creative outlet.
Even still, I do like any recognition I happen to get for the things I have written, and I attempt to disseminate to a larger audience my more popular works or those I happen to actually like. The feeling that you've done something productive, instead of the online equivalent of writing in a frilly diary with a fuzzy pen, is something that can not be matched. So I entertain the idea that there is an alternate universe in which my writing could serve as some kind of more productive means, a way of reaching a significantly larger audience than I have any realistic expectation for with this blog, and that's when I find myself in the cafe, probably on my phone, listening to music on repeat, pondering the "what if". I wonder what the dramatized translation of that would be.
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