Until my thirties, I wrote like somebody I wasn't. Every once in awhile I'd walk around in the afternoon wondering if I'm not writing like myself who am I writing like? Who was I writing for?

Just as I was about to turn 30, I actually I stopped writing altogether. What finally drove me to quit, or go on this long hiatus, was this realization that I was writing for nobody. I was creating stories for a person who didn't exist. If I were to write like myself, for myself, then at least I would be guaranteed one person who was getting something out of my writing. But as my twenties were reaching its finale, and I had no career what so ever to speak of, neither professionally nor creatively, the heaviest burden I felt was the feeling that I had wasted a decade trying to please an empty void.

No.. I take that back. Actually what weighed heaviest on me was the fact that I had no career. I no longer cared about being a writer anymore. I looked around and saw how many of my friends were making a living in a longterm career, have been making a living, and they had trajectory. Some of them had houses, a lot of them were married. I had none of the such. Where would I find a job? I would probably need to get one of those jobs where people made nothing and had no upward mobility.

I wouldn't actually mind working such a job actually. Back then, even as a 30 year old I would've gladly scrubbed tables or helped people pick out the right printer for eight bucks an hour. Whenever somebody else did that for me when I was at the diner or at

Best Buy

I never looked down on them. Never thought lowly of them. But since all of my friends were settled in their careers, I felt too much shame. 
 
I instead collected unemployment. The applications were easy to fill out in the proper way to make it look like I was legitimately looking for a job. And I lived in a large house where I managed to get one of the people to cover my rent for me. Being near a college campus there were a lot of events with free food. I went to these acting like an older student and filled my belly for free this way. I became pretty good at acting like I was interested in the environment, or Asian Student Issues or Black Rights or whatever club it was that was giving out free sandwiches or burritos. 
 
Living this way allowed me to squirrel away most of my unemployment checks. I didn't trust that I could live rent free forever. And I was getting sick of attending all these free events just to eat a meal. I had to get out of this situation, but I had no clue how. Some days I'd desperately think that I should write again. I couldn't believe it, here I was feeling the writing itch! But I never scratched. I never took the bait. Wanting to be a writer was got me here in the first place. I was not going to fall for it again.