Every song I hear, every word of the lyrics, every note of the tune; every painting, every stroke; every page of every book; every frame of every movie and video fills me with jealous rage that others could find the time and the opportunity and possess the skills to produce what I could not. Forget all the other subsidiary goals in my life: the ones about having a boyfriend, having a nice place to live, having a great job, owning my own company, feeding the hungry, lifting the poor out of poverty, curing cancer. Whether selfish or selfless, those are simply things I would like to do or just have happen. They are not my mission, they are not what drives me to do things. They are simply milestones along the way, things that tell me I might be getting there.

My mission is to create.

I don't care what I create. I will try my hand at everything, and create reams of absolutely dreadful dross in every field of endeavour. I will practice 'til my vision fails and my hands creak and mind goes but I will create something wonderful, beautiful, unique, useful, something that will last. Hidden in the mounds of worthless derivative cliched garbage there will be a diamond, created by accident or distraction when I was too tired to think or trying to do something else or maybe really by design and purpose. My life will not be a purposeless bumbling from the mild discomfort of "poverty-stricken" youth to a comfortable senility surrounded by the accumulated possessions of a lifetime of minor happiness, small talk, small thoughts.

Damn you all and your expectations, damn me and my lack of follow through, I will achive this. Every time my nerve fails and I'd rather sit back and do nothing, I will come back and read this and remember this thought and this time and this feeling. I will achieve something worthwhile, something that everyone can look at, and my name -- whichever name I choose, damn you -- will not disappear when I do. And in the meantime, there will be lots of failures. Laughable attempts, ill-advised plans, crazy schemes, obvious mistakes. I will fuck up over and over again, but I will learn and move on. Someday, somehow, I will achieve something great.

Watch this space.