![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
It’s my birthday, and I’m feeling generous, in my own way. Here’s a bonus Demotivator, to help put your potential in perspective.
ASPIRATION
You will never be this good. You’re not even Titus Andronicus good, much less Hamlet good.
click for larger version (widescreen)
Original engraving by Samuel Cousins (1849).
I could just tell you how old I am, but where’s the fun in that. How about you tell me how old you think I am, chronologically or mentally. Or write a short bio about my background, and how I came to write 101 Reasons.
(You can be as nasty as you like about me, but negative remarks about my family will be deleted, and your IP address banned from even viewing the site.)
Here’s a quick poll, for those of you put off by wolf’s brilliant entry, or just too lazy to comment:
Loading ...So, the consensus is that I’m 36, by a narrow margin. As Stephen Colbert would say, the market has spoken, it must be true. Do you think I should have put my real age as one of the options?
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Happy Birthday! I’m going to guess 37.
On this date in 1864, Sean Lindsay was born, much to his surprise. He had been enjoying a nap in the womb of his mother, an overworked and underpaid wombat chiropractor, when the local midwife, in an effort to relieve the pressure Sean had been placing upon his mother’s lower left phalanges, had her ingest a special herb. Several nanoseconds later, Sean entered the world, quickly and headfirst.
From a young age, Sean cast a disparaging eye towards writers. Looking back, he can remember his first disappointment. “I was five years old,” he told me, as he gazed into the fourteen-year old Scotch he had talked me into buying. “I had thirty quid on the hare, and then – just like that – the tortoise pulled it out. I mean, who bets on a tortoise? Nobody!”
However, that first experience also taught him an important lesson: Clichés (and expected endings) are bad. (It also taught him that two pacifiers and a rubber ducky don’t fetch as much as you’d think from the local pawn shop, but that’s another story.)
Sean never forgot that lesson, and when he reached maturity, he left home to start his own website, 101 Reasons to Stop Writing. “It was my dream. I had to educate the world, and prevent anybody else like my Uncle Arnie from ever writing another disaster like his Ode to My Left Kidney.” He drained the Scotch and looking longingly at the bottle until I shrugged and bought him another one. “And here I am, reduced to Demotivators, guest postings and begging for Scotch. Still, it’s a living.”
Happy Birthday, Sean!
[...] to 101 Reasons to Stop Writing where Sean Lindsay has been so gracious as to give the blogosphere a BONUS demotivator for the [...]
My ex-wife used to go on and on about how writers need to off themselves before they turn 40, so as to make sure that they die “tragically young”. I could read the subtext, and pointed out that most forty-year-olds can no longer blame their parents for everything they haven’t done, but getting that English degree bought her an additional ten years of absolution from adult responsibilities. Let’s hope that your situation is “neither”.
I have neither offed myself, nor plan to — suicide is the luxury of the childless. The whole tragically young thing is for people who fear the inevitable repeition and decline of a long career, and the slide into obscurity and irrelevance. But, as your ex-wife clearly built a wall to avoid, you have to have a peak before the decline.
Ok, so how old are you. Out with it! You can’t have us filling polls for nothing!
Sara, do you think I should have put my real age as one of the options?
What, and give up the chance of laughing at all of us who actually voted? Isn’t laughing at writers the ultimate purpose of this blog (after getting us to STOP WRITING, that is).
Now, seriously, you don’t need to tell us how old you are, just how old you feel
(I have a nifty little formula for calculating real age based on avowed age: up to 30, real age=confessed age, 30-40 real age increases a year for each year that passes, 40-50, increase confessed age by five, 50-60 increase by 7, 60 and on, increase by 10)
“Isn’t laughing at writers the ultimate purpose of this blog”
It’s more about getting writers to laugh at themselves, long enough to start feeling really depressed.
I think, by your formula, I’m 33, though I felt 45 for most of today. (What I assume 45 feels like, that is.)
I’m 36, which is a particularly uninteresting age to be. At least I live in interesting times.
“It’s more about getting writers to laugh at themselves, long enough to start feeling really depressed.”
Laughing at yourself is good, getting depressed about it–not so much
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