++Magazine

Goddamn! Have you ever felt like a wannabe? A poser? A fraud? Somebody who wants to be something he just isn’t? Well, I feel like that everyday. I claim to be a positive guy and smile a lot to back that claim, but sometimes I just feel like a jealous bitch. A good friend of mine just started with a column on a Dutch newspaper website and I feel very happy for her. I really do. I love her and see her as family and want her to have everything she wants, because she deserves it. The thing is that her success makes me feel like I have failed. With this ++mag site, the friends that write for this site and the emptiness in that nobody else reads this. That newspaper friend and I are the same age, yet she is somewhere I can only dream of being one day. Her writing has a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that is so much more refined and writer-like than my scribbling. So why am I even trying to write? I mean there are so many people that write on their blogs, share with us their little stories that they think are going to change the world. Just like I do. But reality is: Who gives a fuck?! Are people waiting to read this endless insecurities? I feel like a wannabe singer who enters ‘Who Wants To Be An Idol?’ thinking he’s the new Justin, while the whole world looks at him and sees the a-melodic, a-rhythmical guy he is and just laughs at him.

The thing is that this inability to produce something creative is a fundamental problem in my life. And I don’t think I’m the only one. In writing these personal stories I hope that somebody will read this and be like ‘I’m not the only one! There is still hope!’ Because I think there is a group of people who are blessed with insecurities and a very negative perfectionism. If I would take the time I use on thinking about writing, designing the cover of my first novel or making up the speech for my first award,  and use this time on real writing, I might be somewhere. However I feel like I’m mentally blocked in putting myself to the test. I think so much about doing, that the only thing I really do is think!

And how to change? I mean, how do you change from thinking constantly to somebody who just does what he fantasizes or talks about? Should I read ‘The Power of Now’ or ‘The Secret’? Should I see a shrink? Try LSD to release my creative mind from its inhibitors? Or is this just who you are? A piece of my personality and will I die wondering what the answer really was to how I could change? I’m scared of that day. Not the dying part, but the part where I look in the mirror and see a fifty five year old guy with gray hair and bags under his eye, who is still working on his first novel, has never published anything except his blogs, has never developed his technique and is still waiting for that day when he isn’t that perfectionist anymore and just writes like he has done thousands of times in his dreams. I don’t want to be that guy. The letters that appear on this digital paper while I write is my savior from being that guy. It doesn’t have to be good or be big. I just want to have the feeling that life hasn’t passed me by. I don’t want to stand on the sideline and see the rest of my friends evolve and achieve their goals and happiness, while I stand and cheer for them but at the end of the night go back to my dream life. And I don’t mean that in the nice sense of the word. So this must be my therapeutic outlet and at least I can lie to myself and be like ‘Hey, well at least I tried to be a writer and gave everything I had’.