I Will Become the Ideal Writer Next Week

I remain, unfortunately, human

Friends, ✨

Last week, I wrote about how I want to optimize myself into the perfect writer. Well, I started out this week charged-up and ready to cut away every part of me that would not help me efficiently generate shareable written content.  

Unfortunately, I have failed. I am, unfortunately, human. I wish I were a machine. 🤖

First off, I got sick this week, something that never would have happened to a computer. 🖥️ I was really sick—like, stumbling around my house in some kind of fever dream. I wrote 500 words, but when I re-read it, I discovered that I had written it in a strange pidgin/patois Internet-drenched dream-dialect. Here is an excerpt:

Money will fix all of your problems. Wake up. Free yourself from the Matrix and attain unmatched perspicacity coupled with sheer indefatigability and become an Alphasigma Billionaire.

It’s just incomprehensible trash. 🗑️ I mean, I love shitposting to get engagement and followers, but that’s just a little too silly even for me. 😛

Second, my kid got sick. 🤒 I was trying to do the girlboss, feminist thing (ignore him until it’s time for him to go back to his dad’s; he’ll be fine, and anyway, why do I have to be the one to take care of him? Just because I’m his mother?). But he’s just so darn cute, and when he’s coughing and hacking, he looks so sad and doe-eyed that I couldn’t help making him soup, 🍲 running to the store to buy medicine, 💊 and rubbing Vaseline on his little nose, 👃 which has been chafed raw from wiping.

The story of my flippin’ life. Except I’m not sure there’s a “success” at the top yet. Photo by MJH SHIKDER on Unsplash

Allow me to complain for just a second: this is exactly why it feels like I’ll never become a great writer. There are all these people around me—family members, friends, coworkers—who always want to “hang out” or “come see my school play, mom,” or “come to my barbecue.” And so I do, and I make only 10% of the content I could. Sometimes I fantasize: what if I were just complete alone? How much content could I make? I could write three books a week if I just didn’t have anyone in my life! If I just lived alone in a dark and windowless room, no distractions, just pounding out the content until my dreams came true, at which point I could continue sitting in the windowless room, pushing out content.

…a girl can dream.

If “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” then I wish I didn’t have a life. Because my plans are important to me.

Anyway, after that, I ended up getting addicted to watching these YouTube videos where a sad and lonely man eats mountains of fast food in his dark apartment to pounding techno music. It’s not supposed to be sad, though—I guess it’s supposed to be fun. But then I looked up at my computer screen to realize that it’s already Friday afternoon, and here I am. Weak, unoptimized.

Pathetic.

Useless.

Piece of shit.

(Don’t worry; this is how I hype myself up.)

Anyway, I’m going to take this weekend off to reset. Then, on Monday, it’s back to the lab, where I swear I will turn myself into the ideal writer.

Next week, it’ll be no excuses. Next week, I will hustle. For now, I am forced to reckon with my unfortunate humanity, so I will nurse a pint of Talenti, snuggle on the couch, and watch YouTube supercuts of motivational speakers.

Love, ❤️

Emmeleigh

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