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I was born a businessman, and I will die a rich businessman. The quality of the product is of no consequence, a good businessman sells anything. He sells everything. He must exude self-esteem and confidence in astronomical quantities, as I do, and he must know, deep in his loins, that Sales is where he was born to be.

In marketing school called Life, they teach you that the purpose of any human being, whether it is a businessman, a writer, a male trying to copulate with a female at the bar, a musician, an engineer applying for a new job, a child at their first day of school, a vacuum salesman, or a female call girl trying to turn a trick, is to sell themselves. If a human being is unable to sell themselves, they will have no success in selling a product, even if it is free food to a starving man.

It is always the fault of the businessman if his client prefers the product that is free or cheaper. If he can be swindled out of his product through lack of initiative or timidity or shame, even if the product is a book that he wrote himself and purchased himself, then he will inevitably fail. It is the duty of the businessman to convince the public that the product they want is great, simply because they want it, and simply because of its name and its heritage. And for this, they will pay top dollar.

Any good businessman is not in business for the money or perks or fame. They are in it to promote products and lifestyles that they fully indorse, but even more importantly, they are in it to promote the art of Sales, the truly fine, integrity-filled and honest art that it is. They are in it to enrich the lives of their clients.

I am a businessman. I am currently in the business of selling literature, written by me. I am trying to sell myself, because I’ve been giving away the product in equal ratio to selling it, which as we all know from the short six-step process listed below, is the key to success in business.

A simple guide of how to be a successful businessman.

1. Create a product.

2. Be ashamed of the product.

3. Don’t feel comfortable selling the product.

4. Give the product away.

5. Pay your credit card off several weeks later with your own money you earned working your part-time job.

6. Repeat.

Following this procedure will ensure Apple-like profits.

This businessman now posts the following job opportunities:
–Literary Agent. Duties include selling my book and convincing me not to quit writing, unless you actually think that I should. Wage is 10% of sales.
–Full-Time Editor. Duties include screening my writing and telling me what is a dud and what is less of a dud. Wage is first position on my ‘Thank You List’ for book number two.

I take resumes by email and spontaneous interviews if you broach the subject.

Please consider your involvement with the future of business with some of the greatest business minds in the world: the Balls of Rice Team.

Thank you.

I’ve been writing a story. Supposedly a short story, it has taken me nearly seven months to form, from the first conception of the idea, to the actual act of sitting down and forming a plot, to the position I am in as of late of considering destroying it and starting from scratch, to the hopeful eventual position of fine-tuning and completing the roughest draft of all. There were three or four times when I thought I had it. I thought I had come up with a clever end to a strong plot with a well-rounded character, but after a week-long break from the 4,000 words, I decided it was actually a flop. A flop that I am not willing to abandon because it has taken me seven months to create. I still had faith in the idea, something I thought was unlike anything ever told, but my ability to form this with a style or even an air of storytelling was about as impossible as the plot of the story itself.

So, like the good writer I am, and like the good-cripple-with-hundreds-of-hours-at-my-disposal that I am, instead of working on the story, I am here, working on a very early excuse for why the story didn’t work.

In watching well crafted television or movies, or especially reading books by classic authors such as Vonnegut or Tolstoy or Camus or anyone else reputable, I wonder at how some people can design characters so intelligently that they seem more real than myself. A way of describing a mind, an organized mind or otherwise, so that the reader becomes part of it to the point of it affecting their thoughts throughout the rest of the day is an uncanny attention to detail and contemplation that I can only dream of having. The way to create a character in a script so that you remember that certain characters only say certain things, and that dialogue is important in that there are two or more characters with two or more completely different personalities, is, as I’ve discovered as the ultimate rookie of fiction, impossibly difficult.

In Forewords and Afterwords of the short list Tolstoy books I’ve read, the translator gives insight into Tolstoy’s journals and thoughts during and after his writings. They are decidedly negative in all aspects, and seem to mirror those of my own. An inability for contentedness with a piece, or a very fast turnover rate between satisfaction and disappointment. The fact that he thought the same things brings me hope. The fact that I know I will never write anything anywhere near the level of even B-authors, let alone the classic minds of literature, takes away most of that same hope.

My works always branch out of a single phrase or idea, never of a plot that jumps or a character that erupts. I am an idea man, pretending to write stories. The only thing easier to see through than my one-dimensional stories are my one-dimensional blogs about those stories.

And as a character is simply a reincarnation of the author that created him, I have discovered the reason for my inability to create a character with a soul, a character with a personality, or interesting thoughts, or dialogue that is in any way captivating. It is because I lack these things. That my life isn’t interesting enough to create interesting characters, and because of this, they are all flat, emotionless robots. That even though I can get attacked in foreign countries, and break my legs in skateboarding, and tackle shoplifters while in a cast on my first day back at work, I can’t use the semi-interesting events of my uninteresting life to write a story or create anything of worth. Because I am always lost in bigger ideas that aren’t worth much. I am lost in a pixelized, boxed-up version of the world where I disallow the truly interesting.

The problem with my characters is my character. The problem with my ideas is my brain.

I fell asleep in the library yesterday. Head down. Computer on, sipping away at its battery. Grease-stained construction hoodie on my back. Ripped up winter mitts on the table. A sleeping cliche.

I am slowly embracing the life of a writer. Either that or the life of someone homeless, and let us be honest, if I pursue this path much further, I will inevitably end up homeless and friendless, sleeping in the library or in a McDonalds on a daily basis. I mean, I haven’t felt like I’ve really had a home for a few years, and I am thinking that this is something I like. If owning things makes a home, then I hope to never have what would be considered an extravagant or even decent home. I have felt like I was at home in any of the past thirty stops I’ve made in the past eight months, save for the two times I got attacked in Mexico. Feeling at home is a large part of having a home.

I am trying to treat writing as a second job, committing to several hours in a week locked in one of two basements that lack internet connection or outside sound. If, at this point, I treated it as a hobby (which it is), it would be about as successful as my hobby of sewing, or yoga, or tennis, or showering. I would basically consider it as something I once did but have become to busy to continue. That is what a hobby is.

It has taken me to the point of writing a book, albeit a rather clumsy one, to be able to admit that I write. I mean, it is embarrassing. If you are a musician you play shows and your success and progress is tangible, it resonates with people far greater than any piece of writing, regardless of quality. If you are a writer, you sit at your computer alone for hours at a time, and when you are promoting it, you are quietly plugging your blog on social networking sites, counting until your hits reach triple digits and you can celebrate by drinking a single bottle of beer. In the past, I would often defer to telling people that I spent my Saturday night reading a book, as if I felt I needed an excuse to stay home on a weekend and the excuse of reading was any less embarrassing than writing. It at least seemed more acceptable. It has taken me the five year process of writing and self-publishing a book to finally be comfortable enough to (attempt to) join a creative writing class. To share new works with longtime friends, or to even tell longtime friends that I do write. It has taken me to write a book (of which I am proud of but not satisfied) to freely admit my joy in writing. My shame level is high. Sleeping in the library seems to somehow lower it.

And I feel free that I can finally admit that I do it, and that I enjoy it. That it is a hobby, if not a passion, and that although it is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done and that every word is exhausting to spew out, and every story frustrates me to the point of never writing another sentence again, that it is one of the more enjoyable things I can think of doing.

To Call Them To Wander is the doorknob to my writer’s-shame closet.

I went tobogganing on a Sunday afternoon. In true Saskatchewan fashion, one of the two best spots for sledding in the city is a large ditch next to a deceased Walmart. The best spot is the city’s original garbage dump turned into picturesque, rolling hill. After four or five runs of straight forward sliding, the under-ten-year-olds and I decided that backwards would be the ultimate thrill. We performed this several times, alone and in teams, and, as we expected, the thrill was extreme.

I applied the backwards logic to my life: I wrote a book, and only now will I return to school for formal English training. And like a traditional student I will then use the royalties to pay for tuition. (This means I need to sell something like 1000 books at the current price.)

I am what is wrong with the world. The guy that writes a book because he can, gets it published by a website and sells it out of his parents’ home. Typing the sentence makes me crumble in embarrassment. There is a book written that was recommended to me entitled ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ by Andrew Keen that I have not yet read (the fact that I am presenting this book in my blog even though I have not read it proves that I am the amateur he speaks of). This book studies, as far as I’ve understood, how the internet threatens to take away the artistic achievements of the past through file-sharing, user-generated free content and through allowing the layman to create at will. Our vanity tells us that the world wants to hear what we say and see what we do, and the internet gives us a domain to do this in as many ways as we can think of. We will pay for these advances.

I may be returning to a university, but it doesn’t mean that my ideas of formal, institutional education have changed. The reason I am taking a single class is because I don’t see myself continuing my education with any seriousness. The idea of it all still blows my mind, and the fact that I will be out several hundred dollars to have one lady tell me what I already know, that my writing sucks, and to have ten other students think the same thing but not say it, makes me consider blowing the whole thing off. But because it seems worth my while, and because backwards is the new sideways is the new forwards, I will likely indulge.

Although not always the wisest of decisions, being damaging and irresponsible and often selfish, going backwards is always more thrilling than the conventional, seat-belts and eyes forward, one step at a time mentality. I am ruining the world for it, but I am obviously alright with that.

See you in the halls. I will be humbled.

Photo taken by Noel Wendt.

It is the season after the season where the seasoned shopping veterans return their Christmas-purchased goods for other sizes, styles, seasonings and the glorious, un-expirable, unbiased store credit. The season after the season does not even pretend to be characterized by joy and peace and love and good tidings, but rather a series of crumpled up receipts and cigarette-scented clothing in ragged paper bags. Disgruntled comments about the roads and how the weather has turned and the months ahead that include said weather. A gluttonous left-over that inhibits those benevolent feelings that rose in us just weeks before.

Although I detest them more than an inner-thigh pimple, I envy the people who are decisive to a fault. Those people who can buy a shirt without trying it on or looking at the price tag or thinking of what pants they could wear it with. Those people who can go through university for ten years, changing their major seven times and end up with a BA in Geography. I detest these people because they think not of the consequences and often end up spending money that they don’t have, but I envy them because they seem to be capable to block out rational thought. They are able to make a decision and live with the outcome no matter how horrendous it may be. I will never be able to do that. I am the great over-thinker.

Sometimes when you look on a map, even if you know where you are going, there are four different routes that look possible and equally as fast and easy. Like you are at the head of an octopus and his legs are your options, intertwined but all ending at the same point. On my short drive to Vancouver, somewhere in Eastern British Columbia, I was unsure whether I was supposed to take the BC-5 highway or continue on the TransCanada or take the third option, even more unknown than the others. The signs only said that there were options, and not which one was the fastest, or most beautiful, or had the best Chinese restaurant on the way. So I cursed the province and my mapless car. I could have picked a route and accepted that trail of asphalt without worry. They all end up where I am going, just with different elevations and types of trees and gas stations to see on the way. Sure seems easy on a map.

Someone told me, “That’s the thing, Nic, they are all possible,” referring to the unlimited number of options and ideas and suggestions I have been sorting through since my last good idea ended in September. And although every option presented to me seems as if it could work, as if I could be a bus driver, or paramedic, or teacher, or taco salesman, or graffiti artist, or tailor, or janitor, or street kid, or clerk, I am somehow unable to choose one, although they would all work out someway in the end. I need to master failure but my over-thinking mind won’t allow me to make the first step.

Then sometimes when you look on a map, there is only one way to get where you are going. Only one road, no shoulder to slow down on, no rumble strips to warn of your apparent doom, no signage to reflect your headlights and tell of potholes or curving roads. Once you pass the junction mentioned above to follow a specific route, it becomes like this. A one-direction, slow-travelling, dark highway that is easy and comfortable, which you can’t get off of until you regret your initial decision to take it or decide that it was the right one whether it actually was or not. That is what scares me. Passing the junction where everything seems possible into the one-lane road that has no options is the most terrifying aspect of my current life.

So I will spend another several months in a limbo competition, waiting until the insides of my feet blister, my back gives way and my knees buckle, trying not to think about the variables, such as a drunk man holding the limbo pole or beer spilt on the limbo floor. Soon enough I hope that either a road will be better lit than the rest (or at least less rainy), either that or I will play a pretty pivotal game of eenie, meeny, miney mo.

Catch a tiger.