“Jenny,” I’m sure you’re all probably not wondering, “what is it that motivates you to keep to your office hermitage, barely seeking the sunlight or the warm embrace of the outside world?” Well, I’ll tell you. I have several powerful motivators:
- Fear of poverty. If you’re new to this here blog, you’ve missed a really exciting past five years. After my career shot around the room making fart noises as it rapidly deflated, I just kept working right along, until the day I no longer gave a fuck and started mocking Fifty Shades of Grey. I owe a lot to that book. If I hadn’t decided, “Fuck it, this book is so bad, I don’t care if no publisher will ever touch me again, if I’m going down, I’m going out in a blaze,” and started viciously mocking it on the internet, I wouldn’t have gotten the courage to say “Fuck it, I’m going to do this publishing thing my way.” But I did, and we went from food stamps to relative financial security in a couple of months. It was insane. But as bad as it was to be poor, what’s almost worse is not being poor, but remembering how easy it was to lose everything the last time. I’m constantly afraid that somehow, everyone will find out that I’m a fraud and not a real writer at all, and I’ll lose everything again.
- Fear that I won’t get to write all the books I want to write before I die. Does what it says on the tin. I have so many stories in my head, there is no possible way I could ever tell them all. It’s like my brain is a sinking ship, and I have to get as many passengers off of it as possible. I wish I could write every second of every day.
- Just generally being a malcontent. I get angry about things, as you may or may not have noticed. And when I get angry, I write about the things that make me angry, and usually I can make one or two of you angry (either with me or at me), and it goes in a beautiful circle of blazing hostility at the world, ourselves, and other.
That’s pretty much what motivates me. I know “championing social justice causes” probably should be on there, and I should be like, all noble about trying to make the world better for my fellow fat people, but I couldn’t take myself seriously if I were taking myself that seriously, and this blog is really only a thinly-veiled excuse for me to make dick jokes about pop culture, anyway.
As you’re reading this, I’m either recording a segment with NPR, nervous about recording the upcoming segment with NPR, or being super relieved that I’m done recording that segment with NPR. Let’s all cross our fingers that I don’t say something dumb, okay? I’ll ask them when it’s going to be on and let you all know. I’m going to be talking about “All About The Bass.” So it’s a pretty fair bet that today, abject terror is my motivator.
Wanna see what other Wednesday writers get all motivated by (I’ve used variations of “motivate” so much in this post, I feel like it’s not even a real word anymore)? Check out their posts: