The Book is my white whale, my philosopher's stone. I could just as easily have called this the Project, as that is essentially what it is. The Project, the work that in its completion would fix everything.

I've had a lot of Projects in my life. The Kayak, the Belt, the Diploma, the License, and many others. None of them amounted to anything really. I am not a college graduate, I don't have a driver's license, I am still over-weight and out of shape. My life is not fixed.

The problem with those Projects, for the most part, was simple: I hate not being good at something. I hate feeling like a failure, I hate feeling helpless and vulnerable. Basically, I hate working to better myself.

It probably has something to do with my ADHD. If I don't like doing something it's like banging my head through a wall, forcing myself to do it. I cannot describe just how frustrating that feels or how daunting that feeling is.

There are things that I am good at, and they are generally things that I like doing. Things that I do because I want to do them and not purely to get better at them. Like video games and writing, for example.

At any rate, those Projects were never completed. Sure, some of them achieved a state that someone else would consider completion. However, they never ended the way I envisioned they would. My problems were unfixed, my life hardly changed, and things just went on as they always have.

The problem was always the way I framed the Projects. The end goal was not owning a kayak, or getting my driver's license. It was being the kind of guy who owns a kayak, transforming myself into Me 2.0: Driver's Edition. I didn't have to bear my responsibilities any longer, I could hand them over to that guy and he would be older, wiser, and better able to handle them and life in general.

Whether I had obtained the namesake of the Projects or not, mostly not, I was still the same old me. With the same problems, the same insecurities, the same burning desire for change. To be different, to have the life I want desperately but can't even put into words or envision.

I want to make something of myself, I don't care what. The me that I am now is not good enough. Not strong enough, not fit enough, not smart enough, not anything enough.

The first major Project of my adult life, The Diploma, did not end well. I believe I mentioned at one point, but I dropped out of college very early on in the process. Because I had a nervous breakdown, see above about me not handling pressure well.

I dropped out of college, and dropped out of life. Spent about a year and a half doing nothing, mooching off my grandfather, and generally being little more than a nuisance. That was a very dark time in my life, a void of misery and self loathing. Living life day to day, struggling to find something... anything worth waking up for.

However, it was during that dark time that I found it. The saving grace, the glimmering ray of hope, something that I could latch onto to help me out of the cesspool my life had become. The Book.

It started with an idea, a fairly simple one: I could write a book! I immediately threw away that plan and replaced it with becoming the kind of person who writes books, which in this case had a handy title.

Author. That's what I wanted to be. That's what I needed to be. I poured myself into that world, took in everything I could to make me better. To make me an Author. Bought books on books, listened to podcasts about writing, and read books pertaining to my genre of choice.

Pretty much every source on the subject was telling me that I'll never really get better as a writer unless I am actually writing. Which is true enough, so I started writing. Fan fiction, short stories, novellas... none of which I actually finished.

I figured, wrongly, that I was improving. I could write fairly well, but it's not really improvement if it puts me no closer to finishing The Book or even any book really. So I started writing, or I should have.

Instead I began constructing the world The Book would take place in. I envisioned characters, rules, laws, locations, religions, mythologies, monsters and anything I could imagine. I filled my head with stories, plotlines, conflicts, protagonists, antagonists...

I basically made my own world. A vibrant, interesting, and wondrous place. For the past few years I have essentially lived in that world, it became my life. I don't envision myself as being a part of that world, but unless I am busy with a distraction it's never far from my mind.

Whether I'm lying in bed, walking around the house, working, exercising, or whatever, I'm thinking of new characters, and new adventures, and new conflict. The world is a living, breathing, changing place. I guess that is part of the reason why I am having so much trouble getting The Book going. I think that if I put it on paper then that world, that huge part of my life, that wondrous place, dies.

That it stops being the magical world in my head and becomes static words on a page. From that I could make sequels, prequels, interquels... but the world would be set in stone. That's not exactly true, but there is enough truth in it to put me in my rut. I choose a story that seems like a good one to tell, and start writing...

Then I come up with a story that seems better, or a character that would better fill a central role, or decide to change something... and I stop and start over. What happens when/if I finish? Do I just stop, or do the whole xquelation thing, or do I create a new world?

I can't even comprehend making a new world in the manner I did the first. I can't even comprehend living without this world in my head. I have trouble replacing my clothes when I need new ones, I get attached to things and it's hard to let go.

There are just too many things going on at once in my head, I don't know what to do. What configuration of characters, and plotlines, and locations do I choose? How can I make that choice when I feel it is so hugely important?

So, in the end, I have basically went from one rut to another. Traded depression for frustration. I don't know if what I'm doing is right, whether it is indeed just like those other Projects. A lie, a delusion of false hope I made for myself destined for failure.

I know that finishing The Book won't fix everything, that it probably won't fix anything. Perhaps I should give up on The Book, and just write for writing's sake. In fact that's probably the only smart or sane thing I've written so far.

It's hard though, to give up on that hope. That silver promise that saved my life.... To close The Book.