Nothing seems worth it. Your friend(s) are disconnected in their own pursuits and daily errands are routine. “Family” is a euphemism for eating out or eating in. Your entrepreneurial plans no longer feel unique or even your’s. Above all else, waking and showering and eating breakfast is a chore. It is not that suicide is so bad, but suicide does not answer anything, does not arrive at a solution; it terminates the possibility to comprehend an answer.

Yet by running this silent gauntlet of, lets face it, incurable dissatisfaction, you realize you still want to tell a story; because the people in your imagination have no other way of seeing the light of day, and you pull it together for them–not for amusement, not out of boredom, not for the praise of strangers: but writing for the sake of unleashing characters upon a world you hate, and tipping the balance in your favor, evening the odds a bit. To cultivate an understanding of your unsavory being through miraculous creation, by contributing to the world a part of yourself.

And the guy next to me, he said, “Why not just raise a family?”