Friday Freakout

So you know how you're sitting at your desk daydreaming working and you can see something in the corner of your eye?  But it's like on your face? So you swat your hair away because it looks like your hair is in the way, but then you continue to see that strand of hair and you continue to swat at your face and your co-worker walks by your desk and catches you swatting yourself (TWSS. Awesome) and you play it off.  But then you stop what you're doing because the god-damn hair is annoying the ever living crap out of you and you realize that all of your hair is away from your face, yet there's still SOMETHING in your view.  And you go "what the fuck?" and you focus to grab that annoying hair and that's when you realize it's ATTACHED TO THE MIDDLE OF YOUR CHEEK so you start to freak out and you're all, "do I pull it?!"  (THAT'S what she said) and you think to yourself, well if you pull it, three more will come to its funeral.  But then you remember that rule only applies to grey hairs, not stray hairs.  So you pull that muthaf*cker out and you stare at the faint-colored hair you just ripped out of your cheek for three minutes and then you start freaking out more because you think you now have some kind of hair disease or something so you google "random hair on face" and you see something called hypertrichosis and you click on it and you jump in your seat a little because you see this picture:

And then you get the idea to send that picture to your friend because it reminds you of her a little, so you email it to her and then she sends you back a highly inappropriate picture, plus one other picture that you think is hilarious and slightly racist:

 (sorry had to make it large so you could see it <-- twss)

But you laugh because you're asian and you can laugh at those kind of jokes. And you're all "who keeps googling ugly asian babies?!?"

Yeah, that's how my Friday went.

on my memoir. and a reference to gay men and anal.

(via)

One of my ultimate goals in life is to become a published writer.  Sure, I'm a blogger for Brand-Yourself.com and a writer for the Examiner.com and I've got street cred out the wa-zoo it's all fun and awesome, but I want to publish a book.  Specifically, my memoir. 

So, I've been reading a lot of great books lately.  Like Michael J. Fox's new book, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future and Jennifer Love Hewitt's, The Day I Shot Cupid.  Both of these are amazing and funny.  I'm not a big JLH fan, but my BFF wants this for her birthday next month, so I found it cheap on Amazon and figured I may as well read it, right?  The verdict is in: every woman needs to read this book.  I mean, I hate all things chick lit, but this one is definitely  worth it because she talks about crabs.  The STD, not the food.  And yesterday, on a whim, I decided to buy Jen Lancaster's Such a Pretty Fat, and holy cow this book is hilarious!  

Note: I'm a sucker for really good memoirs.  Especially anything by my two favorite authors, David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs.  Because reading about someone else's messed up life makes me think that maybe my life isn't that bad.

Maybe.

So, I'm writing my memoir.  It's been a work-in-progress for about seven years now (albeit slow progress), but it's officially crap and not something I want published.  Or even read by any of my friends.  

See, that's the thing about memoirs.  It has to be good.  Like, really, really ridiculously, mind-blowing-ly, "ohmygawdthatwasawesome"-ly good.  Whether it's about overcoming some kind of horrific, life-changing disaster or going from zero-to-hero, it has to be something your audience wants to read.  

And therein lies my problem.  

What do I have to provide to my audience?  Why is my story worth telling?  What can my audience learn from my book?

Absolutely nothing.

Sure, I have tons of crazy, drunken stories to tell.  Like that time I boarded the wrong plane and landed in Jacksonville.  Or that time I got propositioned for a threesome in Vegas and mistaken for a prostitute all in one night.  Or that time I had sex with a ziplock bag (no, I wasn't fisting myself with a ziplock bag).  Or that time a guy went wrist deep inside me to get a condom out.  But do people really want to read about that?

My current angle for my memoir is about how I transformed into [my version of] Superwoman by overcoming the loss of both of my parents and cervical cancer by age 25, and embarking on changing the world, but I realize that people probably wouldn't want to read that either, because it's just another cancer story and it's not like I'm curing AIDS or anything that a real Superwoman would do.

My flaw is, I feel like I have nothing to give people.  No one really wants to hear my story.  Sure, I've endured a lot in my 26 years, but who hasn't?  What makes my experiences any more challenging than your experiences?

I've always felt this way.  Maybe it stems from not having a close relationship with my parents, but I always feel like I don't have anything to give anyone.  I don't tell people my past experiences because it's all "Debbie Downer" and depressing and who really wants to hear about that?

I've wanted to write my memoir since I was 12 years old because I want to believe that I have a good story to tell and that maybe someone out there can relate to it or learn from it, but I don't know how to write the damn thing.  It's about believing you have an important story to tell, a life lesson to teach someone, an experience that changed your life that someone can learn from, and I don't know how to do that; I don't know how to write well.

Again, this all goes back to my #1 stunna flaw of feeling like I have nothing to give.  I also feel like I'm a terrible writer, but that's neither here nor there. 

It's hard to change the way you view yourself, and what you do, after so many years.  I want to believe that I'm a good phenomenal writer who has an amazing story to tell, but wanting to believe it and actually believing it are two different things. 

It's like hot gay men.  I want to believe I can change a gay man who is ridiculously good looking, to be straight, but actually making him swing on the other side of the see-saw is a completely different story. 

Good anal-ogy?  Ha!  Get it?  Gay men.  Anal.  

:::crickets:::

No?  Just me?