Inspiration... my ass!

This is for Ciara and Emily and any lurkers who were just thinking I should write more.

I recently read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary. It's about a woman who grows up white trash in a trailer park, dreaming of the life she wish she had. She doodles herself into big Victorian houses with happy trees and gardens with fountains and gazebos. She's constantly creating a world on paper that's better than her own. But then she goes to art school and meets a boy who takes her to that life and all is right in her world... only she's lost her inspiration. Years later people want sweet old Misty Marie Kleinman, queen of the slaves, to be an artist again. She refuses, and they torture her. They slip her poison pills for her headaches, they fake her daughter's death, they put her entire leg in a cast for a minor cut and lock her in an attic room with paints and canvases. Suddenly, she's inspired. The greatest artists have been tortured by life, they point out. Misfortune and misery are inspiration.

I figured out what my problem is, what sucked up my mojo. Happiness. I've been terribly happy lately, or in the least, complacent. Happiness will kick the shit out of any muse. Sitting here in my grown up world, feeling generally successful as a human being, surrounded by shiny boxes and noise makers to lull me into a peaceful coma.

BUT LIFE'S NOT FAIR. AND LIFE IS NOT A COMA.

It took some anger to get this going. Some good old frustration. Skin-scraping, knuckle-bleeding, toe-breaking (because I kicked a tree, of course) animosity. Spend a day trying to make microorganisms glow in the dark (AND FAIL), and you'll want to whip out your samurai sword, your nuclear warhead, your Jedi Chef BFG 666 Mobile Missile Launcher and do some damage, too, for frak's sake!

So what is my inspiration, why is my life so fucking unfair? Oh, I shall tell you. Besides the aforementioned fact that I am a cell staining failure, my midsection is too voluminous to be clothed by American Apparel t-shirts. Emily goes and gifts me for my twenty-sixth birthday a humorously witty shirt and I cannot be seen in public wearing it for fear I may just be mistaken for an overstuffed haggis. Apparently, to err is Human, to arr is Pirate, and to be the fat girl is Tracey.

Tis h'okay, though. Because I'm going to do something about it. Emily's pirate shirt is not the first shirt that didn't fit. (You may remember my Elijah Wood t-shirt.) Right after I finish eating my $30 worth of takeout food, I'm going to enlist Billy Blanks's help. And by "right after" I mean in a few days once my Taebo AMPED system gets here. I hope to pick up some sweet moves that even D-Qwon and Chuck Norris would be jealous of. Speaking of unfair, where are the fatties in this video? Is this shit so good that the fat just melts right off? These people are eternally trapped in the video, and they have nothing better to do than boot camp and tae bo all the time, is that why there aren't any fatties? I'm not sure if this is a good omen or a rip off.

You know what else isn't fair? My inability to attract a mate. Sure, I'm not really trying that hard, and my potbelly should have its own pen, but I'm funny. Clever. Smart. Considerate. I walk away from people I know without any notice, but I'm no ugo. But the plain Jane, funny fat girl always plays second fiddle. Wears the hand-me-downs. Drinks the dregs. DOESN'T GET LOOKED IN THE EYE. I don't need to wear makeup to be the main character in my own story, do I? Life is not fair, but I should at least get top billing in my own damn movie.

In the end, I guess what I can conclude is that looking like a sausage, retaining my fitness of zero, and failing to fluoresce will keep me writing. Like I said, life is not fair.