A Frank Discussion

 A Frank Discussion

                Before we move into the final two chapters of this story, I would like to make a few statements about my life and my future.  I stand at a precipice.  I am 25 years old, and while I know that it is not so old, I feel quite old, only for the fact of my constant failures over the past several years and my doubts of enjoying a bright, happy future.  I will be 26 in April.  I will turn 26 in Disneyworld, as I have just told my family that I will go on the trip with them, a situation which I feel differently about from day to day, in the same way that I had discussed my supposed manic depression before.  26-year-olds should be taking their own families to Disneyworld.  As a child I envisioned myself as a young, cool father, one that would have a first child so young that he would have a 12-year-old at age 32 or 34.  I thought about how nice it would be to have a father that was not that much older than myself, and I wanted to be that person in the future.  In the unthinkable situation that I will meet someone tomorrow and begin a one-year-relationship en route to a hasty marriage and child-bearing, I could still have a 12-year-old by age 39, which is not bad at all.  But that is unthinkable, and more appropriately, I will not be able to practice law until I am 30 ½ years old and who knows about my romantic future.  Of course, I pray to meet someone in law school.  Meeting someone under present circumstances is truly unthinkable.

                But this frank discussion carries a heavier connotation with it, which is that if I go to law school, my original hopes and dreams of making my living as a writer—a rare and difficult enterprise, to be sure, but one which I find myself suited for and capable of, despite various doubts—will be dashed, prematurely disabled, put into hibernation, and left to rot on a machine that no one will ever notice.  The heavier connotation, however, is, what if I do not go to law school?  What if I die? 

                Let me be totally clear about something—I do not want to kill myself.  The idea repulses me.  The pain, the loss of future hopes, the disappointment and the disgrace of it.  I do not hate life—as a few people have accused me of—but I hate my life.  My life is a romantic failure on a grand scale.  Literature is the only salve for such unhappiness, the hope that others who have experienced similar results will gain some sort of empathy or catharsis from reading of similar feelings.  But outside of literature, this romantic failure depresses me to no end.  It is as if I never realized that people were constantly on the lookout for reputable partners since the beginning of high school.  For a few years I was not so different or so inexperienced as I now am for my age.  It was around my senior year in college that this great lag began.  The last time a girl cried for me as she realized we would not be seeing each other for a long time.  But romantic failure is not my only reason for hating my life.  This book, Think and Grow Poor, summarizes the second reason for hating my current situation, which is that I foolishly threw away all of my money.  My father used to complain that renting an apartment was throwing my money away, but truly, what happened to me between August 2007 through August 2008 was throwing my money away.  And I will state again that it is my intention and hope to recoup those losses through the publication of this text, and several others. 

                But how difficult is getting a book published?  Impossible, and certainly something as self-indulgent as some of my recent work will never find an audience.  However, I wanted it to be stated here, that this is my 4^th book, and that I am proud of having completed that many by this age, as flawed as they may be.  Daylight Savings Time is my first novel, and one that is in a strangely gimmicky state at its present moment of never being able to be published because of its experimental and unsatisfying story arc.  Book #2 is the collection of short stories compiled for Ashleigh, but this should be appended so that the final story is left out, and several other stories like “Failure, Inc.,” “Every Day is Worse Than the Last,” “Why Do You Think That is Such a Good Idea?,” “Visitation,” and “Vocational Dilemma” (if it is ever completed) are included.  Book #3 is Self-Mutilation, my near masterpiece, my definitive statement, my sour pill.  So much can be said about this volume, but it has proven to be a difficult sell.  All of my work is a difficult sell because I do not believe in conventional storytelling.  I do practice some conventionality, but to write a totally conventional novel that might garner interest is inimical to my aspirations.  Book #4 is this one, Think and Grow Poor, certainly the worst of the four books, but revealing and occasionally relevant.  I like this book because it is definitely about something, though it is about nothing more than trying to live one’s life, which has been extraordinarily difficult for me.  I have plans for a Book #5, but I would like to sell Self-Mutilation first and be recognized as a person with talent before I go on and foolishly waste more time on another book that won’t ever lead to anything.  I am happy with these four books as a testament to my life and if I should die, my major hope is that someone will find some way to have them published (in one volume?  The Collected Works of Christopher J. Knorps?  Could it ever be possible?), and to have them become ridiculously popular, so that my family will be able to benefit from my sorry condition. 

                Of course, I dream of attaining success while still alive, but this world is too harsh for me.  It does not go out of its way to accommodate me and my desires.  It goes out of its way to deny me access at every conceivable barrier.  It is like Kafka and his dream of life being a series of doors that one is granted access through.  The final door is death, but forced to live in a world that attaches the label of “loser” to a person like me, and to have to contend with that gnawing feeling of inadequacy and illness practically every single day, it is a door I think often of opening.  Or rather, pushing past the guard that stands in front of it, a foolish gesture, a “heat of the moment” mistake.  But this discussion serves as an apology and a hope that in the future, my ambition will not have gone to waste.