Here is something True:

I lead a charmed life.

No, really, I'm disgustingly privileged and therefore have been told that I have less of an "original voice" than, say, J.D Salinger. OK, I will give you J.D Salinger, but honestly, I feel a little screwed from the get-go. I can't help where I'm from. But, they have a point; How many things could I possibly say about college life, or movies, or hopes and dreams yadda yadda?

I have been told several times, by several authoritative figures (i.e English teachers and professors), that I have what it takes to be a writer, if only I had the background.

I both agree and disagree with this statement.

First of all, I don't even want to be a writer so being told this just angers me more. You never want to be rejected by something you didn't want for yourself in the first place. But here I am, blogging away so this is now an issue haunting me.

It is very true that I was not once a stripper. It is very true that I have never done time in jail, let alone been suspended from school (though I did come close once). Nor have I spent a long, tortured childhood in the painfully cold Midwest where there is nothing to do but absorb pop culture via the television set. It turns out the only major literary crime I have committed is growing up in the part of California that tends to breed well-rounded, down-to-earth, happy, comfortably liberal, peace and love and all that shit, people.

Damn.

OK, so I may be a tad short on dark material. But who needs dark when you've got painfully self-aware, jaded, and downright insecure?

That, to me, smells like literary gold. Actually, not gold. More like silver.

Possibly not even silver. I'm going to downgrade to, say, nickel or cast-iron.

But my point is, I have shit to say so I'm going to say it no matter what kind of mediocrity stands in my way. I cannot help where I'm from, nor can I help the fact that I had the perfect childhood and that up until three years ago my family was something out of the 1950's. Or at least 1950's idealistic fiction. The line there is a bit blurry.

So I guess that I am now classified as an upper-middle class, white, fluff-writer. Great. Persona-wise I get to be lumped in with Stephen King and Nicholas Sparks. I'm actually a lot like Nicholas Sparks, minus his whole, ambiguous sexuality, thing. (I don't care what you say, no man's-man can write stuff that makes me weep like that. Nor does a man's man have hand-pressed purple button-downs.)

I will never be Chuck Palahniuk or Davis Sedaris. I don't want to be them because that is not my experience (actually, it's copyright). So I will continue to blog to no one and I will write with the comfort of knowing that I am only sharing this mediocrity and sunny past with myself. And that sounds pretty good to me.