Narcissis

It's interesting how I've always been so focused on me: What do I want? How do I get it? I don't seem to remember a time when I haven't led a selfish and narcissistic existence. My mom tells me that when I was a boy I was very kind and thoughtful. I wonder what happened to that kid?

I can't chalk his disappearance up to being a teenager. Well, I could at one point, but that's hardly the case anymore. It's been longer since I was a teen than I was a teenager to begin with. Somehow I don't think that makes much sense, but sit on it for a bit and it'll come clear.

How much of my selfishness is experience and how much is "product of America: Consumer Capital of the World"? I'd like to blame it solely on the environment, but I've always said that I want to be someone who is responsible for their actions, so the blame is mine. That's discouraging.

*shuffle*

I've always been fascinated by writers. Professional writers. I want to be one of them. I want to belong to that group. Specific writers:

Stephen King: Sometimes I get a little tired of his fiction, usually I enjoy it though. However, his non-fiction and his interviews I find myself reading again and again. He's got an ability to make even his most mundane remembrances seem interesting, to me at least.

Steinbeck: John Steinbeck is my literary hero. If you ask me for the greatest novel written in the past 100 years, I will tell you "East of Eden" without hesitating. I enjoy his letters. They've been published at different points and for different purposes at least three times, and I've read all three. He seems like someone I wouldn't ever get to know very well, because there were (what looks to me like) arrogances in his character that I would have a hard time ignoring. However, in his letters to his friends he's warm and helpful and loving.

Anne Lamott: I've only read her nonfiction stuff, but it reads like fiction, so much so that it makes me wonder if it isn't really fiction after all. She's funny and dark and spiritual. The way she puts herself across the page, it's more like you're a friend of hers, rather than a reader.

Combine those three into some sort of a weird mess, and you have me, or rather, what I strive to be. Generally I feel that it fails, but hey, I'm trying, which ties directly into my post about the Three Musketeers. If you aren't trying, you aren't living, and if you aren't living, then what are you doing here?