Every now and again, I let my mind wander about the word. Or words. Or phrases & sentences. About telling stories that affect people, and why so many of stories don't affect anyone. I remember the days when I fancied myself a writer, and I know today that I'm not.

Oh sure, I sit down and churn out a little yarn every week about some tidbit of pop culture, politics, personal discovery, or crime & punishment. There was a time, however, when I thought myself as a writer. I acted like a writer. I even wrote like a writer. I learned that the better I wrote, the worse my life became.

I call it The Bukowski style of writing. To get to the dirty ugly honest truth about humanity, you had to get dirty, ugly and honest. I did my time with mental patients just like Ken Kesey, I shunned the imperialist swine like Hunter Thompson, and I worked crap job and drank too much like Bukowski. I mocked my fellow man like Henry Miller.

There were a few lines I didn't cross. No heroin like ol' Bill Burroughs, no going to war like Vonnegut & Heller, no travels across America like Kerouac & Twain. Every writer had their demons.

After five years of scribing two of everything (two novels, two plays, two screenplays, two children's stories, etc.) and a bevy of seedy short stories, I finally got one published: The Wolf Underneath Me. It was a dizzy 15-page tale of a man stumbling into an Arizona town called Why, where he lives on the top half of a duplex. A wolf lives in the bottom half. It was a take on alcoholism and the sins we carry. A heavy tale indeed.

It took me five years to get a story published and another year to actually get it in print. After dozens upon dozens of rejections from top to bottom, I got one in, and it didn't feel good. I felt wasted. All that effort, and all I could see was the wreck of a life I had made for myself. On the plus side, my writing was slightly improving.

I got involved with a local theatre, and I wooed them with my writing. Look at these short plays, look at these long plays, look at this stuff! Some of them looked at it. Some of them liked some of it. Some of them said they needed to be work-shopped, but nobody wanted to actually put in the efforts to make them plays. All the while, I learned more dark truths about humanity, and my life got worse.

Pretty soon, I couldn't hold a job for more than half a year (because I despised the bosses). I couldn't speak properly to women and most people in general (because I despised their attitudes). I couldn't smile without it feeling uncomfortable (because it felt fake). I couldn't find God in anything, especially when I went looking.

Then I started a rock band. I figured if no one would publish my stories and no one would produce my plays, I would write lyrics. What occurred was more screaming than singing, and no one really understood the words anyway due to extremely loud guitars and pounding drums. It sure did look like I meant what I said.

After a while, I stopped writing songs, and really, I stopped writing stories long before that. I stopped trying to reach the public with my tales of uncensored truth about the human condition. Apparently, the last thing people want to read is how fucked up they really are. It's depressing. I was depressing. I was next to worthless, and so was my writing. No matter how well I wrote.

I just finished reading Ham On Rye, Bukowski's novel about his childhood. It was pretty brutal. From having a belligerent father, to horrible acne, to being a German born American during World War II, old Chenaski took to drinking and slumming and fighting early in life. And this is who I think is the best writer of the last fifty years! I really do.

In the last couple years, a handful of people asked me if I wrote anymore, and I say 'Not really. I'm living life these days.' The real truth is that I don't know what stories to tell anymore. I don't know what people want to read and/or publish, and I don't even care.

Maybe this will change. Maybe I will get that story in my head that I can't stop thinking about, but it hasn't happened. Life keeps improving, but I haven't written anything of value in years. Is this good? Is this the way it should be?

I wish someone would write about it and explain it to me.

Chris Jungle is more of a typer than a writer.