“Ricky boy,” I hear you ask. “Why do you bother? You work really hard on this blog. It’s one of your main reasons for living. You love to write, it’s all you ever wanted to do, but no one reads it. Why, Ricky? Why?”
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that when I started the blog back in 2014 that somehow it might lead me down a path where my writing would be appreciated by millions of people and turn me into an instant millionaire. Fat chance. Instead, my blog about my childhood Christmases (is that a word?) attracts a staggering seven views. Why, Ricky? Why?
No point in speculating but I will anyway. It’s Christmas time, the time when we let in light and we banish shade. (I’m afraid – and this is honestly true – that I thought the Band Aid line was that “we banish aid”. D’oh.) You’ve got better things to do, like spend time with those you love, you’re eating, you’re drinking – everybody’s having fun, except this silly fucker who is still trying, and failing, to make it as a writer. But I’m not bitter. I’m really not.
I’m the aspiring rock star who plays to a handful of people in a small pub and I still play as if I am playing Madison Square Garden. I am the actor in the local am-dram who quietly hopes that she or he may be spotted and signed up a Bond villain. I’m the crap footballer playing on the council pitches dreaming of running out at Anfield. I never made it, I’m not going to make it, but the dream lives on. And I am massively grateful to the seven people who read about my childhood Christmases.
If I was a successful writer, published in the newspapers and writing best selling books, would I be happy? Would the jet set lifestyle really suit me? What if the gutter press turned me over and uncovered the bits I got wrong in my life? I hate seeing pictures of myself at the best of times. How devastated would I be if an unflattering photo of me appeared in the Daily Hate Mail? Maybe the failed but persistent writer suits me? And if the seven, or any of the seven, people enjoyed what I wrote earlier today, well isn’t that enough?
I’ve given writing my best shot. If my best wasn’t good enough – and clearly it wasn’t – at least it was my best. I left nothing out there.
Thanks for reading. It means everything to me, even if you think it’s shit.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays – whatever works for you.
