Facebook - The High School Lunch Room, and the power of BELIEF!!!

"All things are possible to he who believes" - Mark 9:23

I didn't think I'd have anything for you today, I've been exhausted for the most part to the point where nothing was passing through my head all day and I really didn't have anything to talk about. I had actually fell asleep until the music from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring had woken me. It was only about 7:30 and way too early to be out like that; that's where you wake up at 2 AM and you're shot for the rest of the day. I know you've been there before, haven't you?

For no reason, just thought you should see this

It got me to shoot up; something had to be done or I'd be right back in the same spot fifteen minutes later. So I checked Facebook; they're messing with the interface again to disastrous results. Its bad enough that the site has now degenerated to a virtual high school cafeteria; think about it, its a big room where you know a ton of people, all of them talking at the same time, all about themselves. Everyone is making a spectacle of themself as they walk in, trying to garner as much attention as they can. You move over to your "table", the twenty or so friends that you talk to everyday are waiting, and you start to shoot the shit.

Every once in a while you spot someone you know on the other side of the lunch room that you have to find something out from, or tell them about something, so you go over to their table for a few minutes, and then back to your friends. Once in a while they come to you. Then the bell rings and its off to wherever it is you have to go next.

Now its worse, you have to filter through three pages of "top stories", which is the type of ridiculous nonsense fifty people trying to nail the girl who made the post comment on that leaves you wishing you never commented yourself in the first place. After a few straight days of steady climbing on the hit chart my readership for this spot fell like a circus freak from the ugly tree. I blame this new cluster for the mess....

But then I got a message from a friend of mine telling me how much she was enjoying what I do here, and I felt that I'd be letting you all down if I didn't do my thing.

Abraham Lincoln once said "I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me, and I didn't have the heart to let them down." It's amazing the power that one person believing in you can have. The thought of that led me to thinking about my first book, VPI - the Saga Begins, and how I came to be published, which I'm not sure how many of you know.

Of course, the swirling energy, all of it flowing together and for a reason theme sticks with us. Fellowship of the Ring on the TV led directly to me writing this now. That book was the very thing that made me decide that I wanted to be a writer. JRR Tolkien is probably still the single biggest influence on my style to this day. Like him, I too tend to be long winded and go off on tangents, but the man paints with his words.

I started writing VPI back when I was twenty years old, mostly for shits and giggles. I'd gotten the idea for the book while reading "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman while I was on a trip to Virginia to visit my sister who was in college down there at the time. During my spare time in my mail room job I would write a scene or two in spiral note pads, then pass it around to my friends. They kept cracking up, so I kept writing. It was the only reason I did it, to entertain my friends, that was the fun in it for me.

I still walk around with the spiral note pads. That's what I wrote this in. I still write to entertain my friends; that's why you have this to read today. The fun of it for me is still when you read and enjoy it; that's my reward.

When I left that job and no longer had people to pass my story to I basically stopped writing. Every here and there I'd do more in it, almost always when someone new got into it, but without that it just wasn't fun. Even my girlfriend, who read Harry Potter seven times while I was with her, had no interest in reading my book, which tells you all you need to know about that relationship. Four more years passed and I hadn't hadn't added one word to it.

In that time was my whole Vegas debacle and the aftermath that ensued. Over ten years I had written sixty thousand words of a novel, and a dream, that was never going to go anywhere.

Then one afternoon, in the midst of being lost and not knowing what to do with myself, I came home to find a package from my dear friend Scotty. I had met Scotty in Vegas and we've talked almost every day since. If it wasn't for the worst thing that ever happened to me I never would have met one of the best friends I've ever had. How's that for everything happening for a reason?

Inside that package was a printed and bound copy of what Scotty had of my book. Seeing that, my book, in print gave me goosebumps and a charge you can't believe. The hair stood up, well, everywhere. I didn't even remember giving him that much of it, but that wasn't all that was in it. There was also a note.

In that note, which of course I still have, my friend told me that I had gone too far to stop now, and if he had done that much without finishing he couldn't live with it. His dream too was to one day be a writer, and so he started a publishing company in order to learn the process. My book he explained, when I finished, was going to be the first one that he published.

Here was someone who believed in me so much that he was going to put his money and reputation on the line for me at a time when I didn't even believe in myself. It seemed to me as though he was the only one who did. But that one person's belief was enough. At that point had taken me more than ten years to write the first sixty thousand words. After getting that letter I wrote thirty thousand words in the next thirty days, and insane task, mostly during lunch breaks and the train ride home, to finish the book.

Since then we've learned a great deal about what it takes to break in as professional writers, as well as the publishing business. No matter how good your work is, people don't buy your workm they buy your name; like the facebook cafeteria, they buy the hype. Now the publishing company's goal is to help new artists build that name.

In case you hadn't known this before, Abraham Lincoln was a collossel failure at pretty much everything he ever tried. He then went on to become, arguably, America's greatest President. All because he had a friend who believed in him, and he didn't have the heart to let them down.

The things I talk about in this space are a reflection of what's happening with me and I feel and what I think about it and the world around me at the time. I've been told its been much better since I've been writing it just for myself. But the part of writing it that's for me is whatever joy you get out of it. And it doesn't take much to keep me going, just knowing that you get something out of it too.

If there's a lesson in any of this, something to take out of it, then I hope its this:

It's amazing what people are capable of with just a little bit of belief. It can turn losers into winners, failures into Presidents, dreams into something real. And that magic can make the change in a moment. But if my good friend didn't let me know it then I'd have given up, and you wouldn't be reading this right now. So if it's someone else that you believe in, make sure you let them know. They could be the next Abraham Lincoln, and your telling them could be all the difference.

Later People

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