A Day in the Life of an Average American, aka Rant in some Minor Key (Your choice)

    When I woke up today I felt as I do most days.  I rolled to the edge of my bed, stretched, yawned, and smiled.  “Today was going to be the beginning of a new life,” I told myself. 
    The night before I’d had quiet a bit of fun spending time with one of my most favorite people, but at the same time I had the weight of my world bearing down on my shoulders.  There I was, thirty years old and sadly unemployed.  It’s not as if this is was uncommon theme in today’s America, but for anyone in the position you probably know how desperate and hopeless the situation feels.   However, I decided today would be a better day.
    I stood and took a deep breath.  My mind was racing with all the potential a new day held.  It felt good but it wasn’t really any different than any other day.  I hadn’t noticed that yet.
    I’m currently attending online classes at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh for photography, I’ve self published an Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance fantasy novel, and I spend the majority of my days studying.  As the day ticks by I throw myself into doing class homework and professional homework.  I want to be a successful writer more than anything, so my class studies tend to take a back seat to that.  Either way I’m studying endlessly.  When I’m not studying I’m writing, so as you can see I don’t have a whole lot of time for anything else.  Or do I?
    The sun peeked through my extremely dark and drawn shades and I grimaced at the thought of opening it.  My eyes don’t adjust well to sunlight, they never have.  That’s probably because most of my waking life occurs after dark.  No I don’t fancy myself a vampire or anything dark and broody like that.  I prefer nighttime because it’s quiet, calm and relaxing.  I’ve read stories of writers who listen to music when they write or writer’s who work best when they can hear the rest of the world.  That’s not for me, I tend to hate the rest of the world and it just serves to distract me.  So, as I drew the shades open I did in fact grimace.  That wasn’t a good start to the, “beginning of my new life.”
    If you detected the blatant and obvious foreshadowing I’ve been delivering with a heavy hand you already know where this is going.  I went to the bathroom and dropped trough, which in itself is a good metaphor for the “Day in the Life of an Average American.”  Whether the rest of the world is actually shitting on you or not, it sure does feel like it, doesn’t it?  Still, I hadn’t noticed how similar my day was to every other day of my life yet.  I didn’t realize that until much later.
    I ate breakfast, a rather bland egg sandwich; two jumbo eggs, two slices 100% whole wheat toast, and a big glob of fat American Mayo to top it off.  Yummy.  After my unhealthy appetite was satiated I settled into my computer chair and turned the life sucking monster on.  I’ve presented myself in this post thus far as a writer and a student, but the real truth is I’m a time sink junkie.  First I checked my email (all spam, no one ever actually communicates in today’s America), then I checked my face book page and of course I had notifications (all game requests, no one actually communicates in today’s America), next I checked my Amazon sells report to see that my book I spent a whole year working on hadn’t sold any copies, and finally I checked my online classroom to see that I had missed the due date on an assignment.  My “New Beginning” was indeed off to a rousing and groundbreaking head start.
    The prospect of failure, doesn’t bother me, because I’m intimately involved with failure.  I’ve always shrugged that off and told myself, “Failure is part of living.”  However, the revelation of my days pursuits still bothered me.  The aspect that bothered me was the not knowing.  I have a self published book, that part wasn’t hard.  I know how to write, I paid a good editor, and hired an amazing cover artist, but none of that solves the part I don’t know.  How do I promote it?  What must someone do to get the word out, build an audience, and assure that their good book gets read?  The answer is, “I have no idea”
    Thus began the next part of my, “New Beginning.”  I started browsing Google for the answers.  Once again, I wasn’t aware yet that this was exactly like every other day.  I always fall into the trap of searching for the answers and never finding them.  The internet is designed around this basic concept, not by intention, but by coincidence.  People attempting to be seen and known have saturated the internet with so much information without clarity.  It’s very easy to find, “what you need to do,” but damn near impossible to find, “how to do it.”  The whole mess has developed a proverbial quicksand of dead ends.  I’m not better, even as you read this I’m attempting to be seen and known, but I’m not claiming to have any of the answers.  I’m just pissed off I can’t find them, which is the essence of “The Life of an Average American,”  we’re all pissed off over something or another.
    As I fell back against the hard back of my make shift computer chair that I’d pulled away from the kitchen table my reality began to sink in.  The smile I woke up with was gone and the heavy oppressive clutch of stress and responsibility still rested on my shoulders.  Hours had passed and I’d neither learned, nor accomplished anything.  My, “New Beginning,” was a bust, but that was okay, because there is always tomorrow.  “I’ll start a new life tomorrow,”  I told myself.  Sadly, tomorrow never comes.