The Muse Inside

Sleepless nights bring out the muse inside me. I’m writing this at sleepover with a high-school friend and I just feel like writing something deliciously random. Journey themes recur frequently in literature. It presents the main character in an existential conflict, and engage them in a journey so to bring meaning in their life at the end of it.

But I don’t want my life to become a preamble to some distant happily ever after. Why do we fantasize so much about the lives protagonists in coming of age stories lead?

Resist the appeal of a storybook life, or else narrative patterns will become personal myths that dictates your life. You’ll break your life into chapters and set goals within three act structure and make friends and enemies according to archetypes, all in a ridiculous attempt to trace your own character arc across the coming decades.

That would be a shame, because a storybook life is overrated. It is boring and safe and artificial as a saturday night sleepover with your high-school friend.