A Brighter Future

I always wonder what life would be like if I took my future more seriously.  I’m a capable person.  I always showed promise in everything I’d ever done.  But now, at 36 years old, I have no marketable traits.  I’m a writer, and a half-assed musician—kind of ___ it’s a long story.  I thought I had no future.  Isn’t it so much easier to think you have no future before the future comes?  36 years of fucking up and what do I have to show for it?  36 fuckin years!  I have paper, and I have a pen.  But that’s it.  Nothing else.  No priors whatsoever.  No promise.  Do you remember when the future used to be better?  Brighter.  Bigger.  Whatever.  It was the drugs, the booze, the depression, the nihilism, the existential angst, you know.  The fuck all!  I can write a story about wasting away like it’s no one’s business but my own.  Then what do I do?  I set the pages on fire because I have no future and there’s no use in trying.  No one buys my books.  I wrote created & designed these books myself because I had fuck all else to do, and no one cares.  So if I were to write a note to myself five years in the future, I’d say one thing: Remember when the future used to be better?  But then I’d set the page on fire because there’s no point; I don’t have a future, I never did….  Do your homework.  Study.  Set goals.  Do something.  I smoked my homework, and I shot my goals.  The future only gets better if you plan for it.  But I don’t see the use in preparing for it if it doesn’t get better.  This is what I told myself 10-15 years ago: Nothing ever gets better, it either stays the same or gets worse.  Future Self, if you’re reading this, just know, you’re a fuckin idiot for believing me!