Writers do not die rich. Hell, they don't even die out of debt. Just ask Stephen King. I can't even do warehouse work because my back is too unreliable, and all I keep getting are stupid frelling ads from Indeed for companies a) outside of Austin, b) warehouses that want 12 hour shifts and require heavy lifting, and c) Bankers Life sales.

At this point, I contribute nothing and am nothing but a drain on society. I cannot point to a single thing I do in my life that cannot be done faster and better by anyone else. And journalism is dead. You either tow the Ministry of Truth's line and write newspeak, or you disappear, along with any career aspirations you may have had. College for what? I'm interested in nothing.

Yes, I'm writing from the middle of the storm, but that is where I usually find myself most days, anyway, and in that storm, I can see clearly that my options are rattling around like the final two or three grains of sand in an hourglass.

There is no greater hell than to know oneself to be leading a pointless existence. There's no other horizons to reach for. There's no other hills to climb. I've died on all of them. I hate my existence, not just my life, and I can no longer afford to just keep existing in the vague and vain hope that Something Better will come along, because there is no coming along when one has stopped cold and has no forward momentum.

I hate Austin. I hate that I wasted money to move here. I hate that I am now financially stuck here. I hate being dependent on others with no way to move forward. I now truly understand Van Gogh's dilemma. He, too, felt that weight of being burdensome to others.

"During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them." Revelations 9:6

"Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." Matthew 25:29