March 5th, 2012 / 10:33 am
 Random

Accomplishment Chart

I used to be a videogame designer. I made flow charts. I compared pet games using tables in Microsoft Word. In one pet game, you tap balloons and then you tap pets and then the pets are happy and then it gives you more things to tap. ‘It’s a great success,’ someone said. Then the person went to lunch. Tapping the screen, I felt like my life had taken on a tragic dimension. Then I decided to go back to school. Most people there are younger than me. Sometimes I add a person on Facebook and it’s like, ‘1993, that’s your birth year, wait, I just talked to you in person, you’re a fully grown human being, how is that possible.’

I’ve never been more conscious of my birth year/age. I frequently compare my life in my head to other people’s when they were the same age. If I read a book that I like, I secretly want to be younger than the age at which the author wrote that book, so that I still have time to achieve what he/she did.

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Guillaume Morissette’s debut collection of stories and poems is called, ‘I am my own betrayal’ and will be out this Spring.

11 Comments

  1. March 5th, 2012 / 10:39 am Helen—

      Questions Happiness is the name of my new iphone app.

  2. March 5th, 2012 / 10:45 am Bobby Dixon—

      I tell myself not to be mad that I am older than those that write better and more often. 

  3. March 5th, 2012 / 11:59 am Anonymous—

      Me, too. There’s some column or web site, “Debuts Over 40.” If I ever debut, I’ll be over 40, but is that what I want to be known for? Known as? Those “Under 30’s,” we all grant that they will both go on being young and go on to be other things, contain other qualities; they’re never only young. But an over-40, what is that but a freak?

      I also read the bios on the back of German books. They often say “studied literature [or philosophy], and since x year, makes their living as a writer.” It’s untraslatable: “seitdem, lebt als freie schriftsteller/in.” So not only do I calculate when I can be sent back to grow up and write the books I’ve just read and loved, I wonder when it is I’ll grow up German and live as a free writer. 

  4. March 5th, 2012 / 4:12 pm Michael Koh—

      this is wonderful i want this as a poster

  5. March 5th, 2012 / 4:22 pm Jimmy Chen—
  6. March 5th, 2012 / 4:22 pm deadgod—

      Keats:  dead at 25.  Marlowe: dead at 29.

      Penelope Fitzgerald:  first book at 58; first novel at 60.

      write wright
      is the right rite at
      rat a tat tat
      solar circumambulat

  7. March 5th, 2012 / 8:22 pm Frank Tas, the Raptor—

      Lebron James scared the shit out of me when he started in the NBA because he was only one year older than me, but for some reason writing ages never really bothered me nearly as much. Probably because peaking physically and peaking as a writer are two very different things? Also probably because Lebron James was an objective talent, not a subjective one?

  8. March 5th, 2012 / 10:58 pm Michael J. Martin—

      But, no haterade, why is Tao Lin there?

  9. March 5th, 2012 / 10:59 pm ZZZZZIPPP—

      ZZZZIPPP FEELS ODDLY CALMED SEEING “EARLY ACHIEVEMENT” CONTRASTED WITH INEVITABLE DECLINE. AT NO POINT WERE HEMINGWAY, BASHO OR RHYS TRANSFORMED INTO DIVINITY FOR EXAMPLE AND IT SEEMS SAFE TO EXPECT THE SAME FROM LIN AND PYNCHON

  10. March 6th, 2012 / 12:32 am 'Guillaume Morissette'—

      contemporary writer that I can predict/make up imaginary achievements about.

  11. March 6th, 2012 / 9:25 pm Ivan Pope—

      “I frequently compare my life in my head to other people’s when they were the same age.”
      I do the same, always have. Not to compare achievements, but to just get a handle on the spacing of life. In fact, I do it so much I wondered if there was a name for it.
      I relate the timing of my life to my father’s life. For example, I think about how old he was when I was born and how old I was when my son was born (about the same). Then I think about how old my father was when I was my son’s age, and I get a handle on things. Or, I think about how long after the war my father did this or that, to get an idea of how fast things move on. I was born sixteen years after my father came back from teh war. Who would have thought the world could change so much, but it had and I benefited from that. Now nothing phases me, things change, they stay the same.