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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Carpe Diem: Which Technically Means "Pluck" The Day Like A Flower, But Whatevs

Carpe THIS buddy.
No, seriously.  This is what you want to carpe. 
"...TOMORROW WILL BE DYING"

This is the reason.

It's the reason to write. But really, it's the reason to do anything your soul moves you to do.

You do not have time to NOT do it.  

My ex wife used to work in framing and people would always ask her how they should frame expensive pictures. Her answer was always the same: "I can give you some suggestions...but ultimately, it's going to go on your wall." At the end of the day, you're the only mofo who has to look at it every single damned time get out of bed in the morning or come home from work and not get sick of it.

Life is a little bit like that. Actually, life is a LOT like that.

Don't let people tell you what to what's worth reading, what movies you should like, what kind of wine you like or what food is good. It's worth being adventurous, and the advice of those you respect might be worthwhile, but it's your finite number of breaths.

Just like you don't let them tell you what genre you should like in fiction, or what food you should like, or what cars you should like, or what sports you should like, or what kind of sex makes you a good person, or what shows you should like, or where you take your meaning or what you find important. Or that you're wasting your life to invest in writing. Or that you're wasting your life to not have children. Or that you're wasting your life to not do something they deem important and worthy.

Quite frankly, you simply don't have time to live their version of a life worth living. You only get the one.

If you want to write, write. You find people who respect and support that choice and surround yourselves with them and do it. Put your white picket fence and your chance of ever keeping up with the Joneses and your healthy social life and maybe even your "normal marriage" with 2.5 kids on that sacrificial altar, and go for it. If you think a life without reading and writing is not a life worth living, than go gather different rosebuds...

....while ye may.

Each of us has a date. Maybe with a bus or maybe with emphysema or maybe with a self-replicating clump of mutated cells or maybe with a rabid raccoon or Pumkinhead or Sharktapus, and we might go quietly in our sleep or screaming for more morphine and we may not even know who the people are in our hospital room are who are saying good-bye, but one thing is true: we are rapidly--very, very rapidly--working our way through a finite number of breaths.

But none of us is getting out of here alive. We are all food for worms. There is absolutely no time to live life on anyone else's terms.




Make your life extraordinary.


4 comments:

  1. From the clip,
    The poem he chose for them to read ties in even better with carpe diem now that I know, from you, it means pluck the day.

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    Replies
    1. I always wondered if a line where Robbin Williams corrected the student didn't end up on the cutting room floor. Because you're right: the real definition goes PERFECTLY with the passages he read.

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  2. I need to watch this like once a day.

    ReplyDelete