A Flash Essay On Writer Envy

For years I've been thinking about writing a memoirish book of essays about my experience as a maritial arts student. I even had a working title, Black Belt Essays. I even wrote and published two said essays. But that's as far as I've gotten with this project because of the time issues I keep writing about on Tuesdays and poor discipline and whine, whine, whine.

Just moments ago, I learned that someone else has written my book. Susan Schorn has written Smile At Strangers and Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly, which will be published next month.  #@!!  This is all because I am slow and inept!

Of course, my weak grasp of zennyness tells me that wanting, as in wanting to have written that book, as in wanting someone else not to have written it first, leads to unhappiness. Damn straight about that. But soon this moment of wanting and unhappiness will be in the past and over, and I will be on to another moment in which I will be slow and inept about other things. Yeah. I'm sitting here waiting for that. And waiting.

Oh. Here's a cheery thought. Schorn's book is about karate, and mine would have been about taekwondo. Plus, she teaches karate, while I can barely manage to maintain my own taekwondo skills, let alone teach anyone else. (I've already written one essay on that subject and am sure I can probably wring two or three more on it.) So if we both end up writing martial arts memoirs, they wouldn't be anything alike.

Now, that's a relief. I'm into that better feeling moment already.