Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
RIP
It's now officially The End.
The End of September. The End of Summer. The End of my time at Chiaroscuro Magazine.
Volume 49 just went live as of midnight. It's my last issue as Managing Fiction Editor. I'm going to miss working on the magazine. And I expound on that in much detail in my final editorial.
I did leave out one tiny bit of trivia regarding my exit: Volume 48 was supposed to be my last issue as the MFE, but there was so much good fiction in that final submission period that I asked to stay on long enough to see it all make it in. Sandra and Brett were kind enough to let me do so, and I am thrilled to see these stories finally appear. I have a personal story of my own to go with each of them, but rather than risk colouring your experience, I will simply say they are all quite excellent, and ask that you please go and read them all.
I'd be lying if I were to say I was happy to be leaving. I've never been big on endings. When I'm reading a good book, I always hate that feeling of the ever thinning number of pages in my right hand. I always want it to go on forever. To just keep turning page after page and let the good times go on and on.
But that's never how it goes. It always has to end.
Fortunately, there's also always another book. And I'm about to crack open a new one now: Fatherhood. (No, not the one by Billy Cosby.) I've read the back cover and it sounds quite exciting. Some of the blurbs on the back make it sound downright scary, but they also promise that it will be worth it in the end. It's a dauntingly thick book. It makes a Stephen King novel look like a flimsy pamphlet. But I think I'm up for the challenge.
So onward I go. To a new Beginning. To a new Chapter One.
Deep breath. And...
...here we go.
Build sandcastles. Build the best and most beautiful sandcastles you can imagine. Make them big. Make them small. Make them exactly what you want them to be.
You will upset some people. They will do their best to tear down your sandcastles. They will proclaim them ugly. They'll spit on them. Kick them over. Because that's what some are people compelled to do.
Be undaunted. Build new ones.
They'll get knocked down again.
Build some more.
They'll continue to get knocked down for a very long time.
But keep at it. Keep building those sandcastles. It will feel fruitless after a while. Why spend all that energy building them up when those people will come along and with a single swift kick, knock them all down again?
You must build them because you have no choice. You have a compulsion to do it. And so you build. They tear them down, and you rebuild. They tear them down. You build them up again. And again and again.
Eventually, those sandcastles will take on a life of their own. People will hestitate to knock them down. They will have endured. Your sandcastles will be the new normal.
So go build some sandcastles. The best sandcastles you can imagine. Make them big. Make them small. Make them exactly what you want them to be.
And don't let anyone tell you it can't be done.
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
RIP
I am not here. I was never here. I am elsewhere. I have always been elsewhere.
