Here's Your Typewriter and Your Quantum Bands

I often try to figure out if I might have super powers. Sometimes I'll stand really still and focus a great deal of energy into the palm of my hand, hoping for some sort of flash. Occasionally I'll try to lift something that I know I shouldn't humanly be able to lift. And every once and a while I'll attempt to melt someone's brain with my mind. I have learned the hard way that this is not something I should readily admit to people. They think it's weird.

     But seriously, how else am I supposed to know when my latent powers kick in? Am I just supposed to sit here and wait and risk A) never realizing that I have powers, or B) my powers going off in an uncontrolled environment and setting an orphanage on fire? Pssh... Screw that. I'll take an occasional odd look from a passerby as I try to crush a passing vehicle into a tiny cube with an outstretched hand if it means I learn about my powers on my terms.

     I think admitting to people that you're a writer is often greeted in the same manner. When most of my friends or family ask me about my writing it's so they have an excuse to do a Stewie Griffin impersonation in an increasingly high-pitched voice while they ask me about my novel. People just don't buy it. Unless you can actually show them your super-suit and produce purple, telekinetic knives, they're not going to believe you are the spirit of a British mutant in the body of a Japanese assassin. In fact, they'll probably think you're a crazy person. And maybe they're right. Being a writer is a little bit crazy. It's definitely not normal. Most writers are so ashamed of what they dream of doing that they have to use fancier words like Author, or Novelist, or Wordsmith, or Sentence-Architect, or Page-Humper. Okay, maybe people don't actually call themselves a Sentence-Architect, but you get my point. It creates this massive gap between deciding "This is what I'm going to do with my life" and "Yeah, that's my book over there... oh yeah, and that children's book too, and those four in the adult section."

     Wouldn't it be such a wonderful world if everyone who wanted to do something could drop their day jobs and pursue their dreams starting right now? Unfortunately, deciding what you want to do with your life doesn't mean you'll have bread on the table... or on the floor... or anywhere else for that matter. It usually means you have to shoulder twice the work because that dream is worth working twice as hard for. I guess I just need to buckle down and get it done because I am a writer, and it's about time I put up or shut up.