What It's Like to Write For No One

Lots of people go to school and get a job in some variation of that order and begin to build an adult life. Lots of people don't go to school and do great for themselves. Lots of people take paths they feel are safest for their wellbeing and futures. Others might dive headlong into uncertainty with the belief that if they don't now, they never will. I, myself, took a semi-safe route by getting a BAH and then on to an MA. Not that there are tons of jobs seeking MA students who wrote about the cultural identity of hockey in Canada and the world, but hey, it's an MA. I can research, I can write and I can tell you about it.

Now that I'm out of grad school (albeit, five months out), working a sporadic and unpredictable job with low future prospects I have begun to think about taking that headlong dive. I have a degree I can fall back on, even if it isn't the most supportive. Why not try to do something I want to do before I have to do something I have to do? So, I write for no one in particular. I nabbed a writing gig on a website where I express my views on certain media that someone else publishes so that I can build a portfolio of such work. I wrote a short novella, I have made headway in a series of short stories for a collaborative project and I'm currently writing a novel with the hopes of getting into a writing program that will improve my work. All of this, considering I have been doing it for free, is self-fulfilling. I can't imagine my articles draw lots of clicks or that my fiction will garner publication interest, but it is getting me somewhere that I would like to be. And that is "better."

I'm writing for myself, really. I guess that means I'm not writing for no one, but it is if I'm not the one who determines whether or not I get a job in the field or published in some form. I write about what interests me and what I think I would like to read. I'm writing selfishly, not necessarily purposely appealing to an audience. I feel that I'm not the most uniquely peculiar person in the world so whatever I write might interest someone. But I'm not concerning myself with that, as to say, I'm writing for no one in particular.

And for now that's okay with me. I'd like to improve. If I have to take a hit financially, that's okay. If I get better, I'm just another step towards a larger goal. If people read my work, that's just an added bonus. If you share my opinion, I hope you appreciate it. If you don't, tell me why I'm an idiot. But I'm not outwardly seeking the attention. I'm really writing this down right now because I'm tired of thinking about it in my head. Getting it out is like an exercise in my personal growth as well as an expressive form of writing. Even if this is just delaying an inevitable acceptance of failure or the defeated walk back onto a standard path, maybe it's worth carving it out on the fringe for a bit.