Re: Pete

Pete,

I can't write. Not a blasted thing. You don't understand- the only mildly coherent sentence that I've managed to string together in the past three months seems to be the past two sentences and a half. This presents a problem, as you very well know.

A writer who doesn't write is what? Someone earning a minimum wage at their boring secretarian job, staring the inevitable passage of time in the face as death and degeneration loom ever closer, that's what.

I'm writing to you out of despair, Pete. When we were kids, the future was a far-off thing that we merely acknowledged the existence of, as we claimed superiority over each other on the basis of 'being older'. As teenagers, we sat and discussed the seemingly endless possibilities that the future offered, and the shining path to everlasting happiness which was lined with thornless roses and singing  choirs. 

But these roses aren't thornless Pete. My god- the future has never looked so dull, so ponderous, or so utterly pointless. Am I going to be a secretary for the rest of my life, listening to Mr Hackleton making sexist comments on the phone to his golf chums, while I tap data into a grey box? Am I going to die alone, having contributed nothing to the world except perhaps the donation I made to Greenpeace that summer I went through my vegetarian phase?

The whole hopeless situation boils down to this inevitable problem: I would like nothing more than to create and contribute, to be productive rather than passive. But in the end, nothing seems worthit. How do I decide what is worth my time?

What's the point of anything if we're all going to die?

How am I supposed to be a writer, if I can't write?

I almost didn't send this email. What is the point? I don't know if you'll even reply. After all, why should my miserable words mean anything to you?

Nonetheless, I am tired of doing nothing. Doing something, however pointless, may reassure me. Perhaps I will fool myself into thinking that this email, this collection of letters strung into words and collected in sentences, will have any sort of meaning, to you or to me, or to anything at all.

But I probably won’t.

Yours sincerely,

Jan