I had coffee with a writer friend recently who was down in the dumps about his career. It was a little painful to hear because he's someone I've always held up as a role model for my own career. He's a little bit older than I am, for starters, so he just has had more time on the planet to kick ass. But beyond that, he's been published more, he performs more, he has no shortage of freelance clients, he knows more people in the industry. I could go on and on. He has an agent. Why don't I have an agent? I should have an agent, right?

Well there are a couple of reasons why I don't have an agent, and it's all tied into what we were talking about, what I talk about with a lot of my writer and artist friends. See, he was feeling he didn't have what it took to make it, that he didn't have the drive and discipline necessary. He was in one of his down times. We all go through it. As much as we tell ourselves when the writing is good and we are feeling high, "I've got to remember I'm capable of this when I'm not writing and am beating myself up," depression is totally unavoidable during these times.

You sit in your apartment and stare at the ceiling and think of tasks you can accomplish so that you feel like your day hasn't been completely wasted. (My favorite is laundry, because I actually have to leave my apartment to do it which makes it feel extra important, though of course I only have to go down the hall so I don't really have to work that hard.) Then you think, "I should think of story ideas. I could pitch something. To someone." Then someone IMs you a link to a good MP3 so then you just start downloading music instead.

An hour later you're banging your head on your desk. What just happened? What are you doing with your life?

I read an article about an acquaintance of mine who gives motivational speeches to writers. In it she talked about how everyone had talent, but it's the people who are willing to do the work, who have consistency and follow through, that are the ones who are going to make it.

What about those of us who are partially consistent? Can we partially make it?

I have another writer friend who spends a great deal of time on Nerve, looking for the lovely woman who might be his bride, or at the very least the woman he sleeps with that night. When he told me how he was spending his day, I said, "I just think those sites are a trap."

He replied, "Oh because I could be spending that time looking for work and getting my current assignments done and working on my book proposal?"

And I said, "Actually I just meant it's better to meet people in real life because it's a better basis for a relationship, but your answer works too."

I left him with his finger on the speed dial to his therapist.

Lately I've been engaging in travel porn, trolling Expedia and Orbitz, looking for package deals to foreign lands. Last minute deals that will take me away to somewhere fantastic that will totally inspire me to write the first 150 pages of a book which will eventually be loved by the youth of America. It will be added to the curriculum of pretentious liberal arts universities nationwide. The movie rights will be sold but the film will never be made. I will grow fat and old in Oregon, teaching comp lit to hippies at some state school. All because I took that trip to Berlin in the spring of 2004.

And then two hours later I realize I cannot afford these vacations anyway, and that I could have spent that time working on that imaginary novel instead. And then I go to my couch and lie back and look at the ceiling and wonder if I'll ever get anything published again. A tiny tear forms in the corner of my eye. I fight it off. I dream of Berlin in the springtime and street names I can't pronounce.

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