Ruminations, doubt. A pep talk

How much is the toil of one man worth? How much do you pay someone for doing a job? Who determines what is enough compensation for a job done, and when it would again be reasonable to inquire into the matter?

What is the meaning of this consistent apathy toward women. Typically, I have squandered nearly half a dozen opportunities this past month, two involving the exchange of telephone numbers. Many revolve around my stubborn refusal to either believe what the girl is telling me, or find any interest whatsoever in what she is saying for longer than a few minutes. After that it’s all show, going through the motions, flight-reaction kicking in, quickly overriding the urge to stay and fight it out, figuratively.
What else, when looked at from a certain point of view, is the courtship ritual? What has it become, say, perhaps, since the 1950s, where the ideals and morals of American society began to shift for real, loosening to one, tightening to another degree. Today, now, it’s a race to get into her pants, even if she’s nice, even if she’s not that kind of girl. Sure, every once in a while, you’ll come across a girl, at a bar, in Southern California, who is truly only there because of INSERT FRIEND’S EVENT, but, even if she’s married or has boyfriend, if you and she happen to be at a bar at the same time, you have a fighting chance of having sex with her.
And each and every chance I’ve got, this past month, I’ve pissed away. I even have women coming up to me, even hitting on me, and it just phases right through, like fog over a live wire, except maybe reverse. So much potential energy sitting there, out in space, and this gaseous mass just runs right into it, leaving maybe the slightest bit behind, but for all feasible accounts fully intact so short after its run-in with potentiality.

I am frustrated. I have read hundreds, but not thousands of books, in my life. I have been exposed to some of the best storytellers humankind has to offer, Chaucer, Herodotus, W. Gibson, Plato, Stephenson, Dickens, Gaiman, etc., and can not compile a simple forty page piece of semi-decent material, because I find myself burnt out after spewing thoughts onto a page for twenty minutes.
I need an outline. I need a clear, concise breakdown of the players, in the story, what they are doing, why, where, and to what end. I must sit down and write the framework, ignite the holy fire, finish it up, save the day and get the girl. I know this, and have attempted now three times to complete a decent skeleton. As suggested, I believe the most expedite path toward actually understanding how this is done, is to have it taught to me. Do not despair.
Of course, I can stumble around, finding my own way along the forked, dismal cowpaths, the broad, shining avenues of the storyteller. Certain forces, quietly, inside, work to dissuade me from paying to have an established method of writing quality literature placed before me, when I can simply read voraciously, writing out the framework of my favorite writers, toying with their ideas, filching their best devices, their most successful literary bridges, the choicest modi operandae. Filch away, olde boy, snatch and steal, take what is not yours and make it something no one has ever dreamed about. The Holy Fire is but a small flame, yellow, burning faintly in the center of my pectoral cavity. I just saw it, in front of the mind’s eye, barely flickering, like the pilot light on a gas stove, hidden away in the bowels of the beast. With the right maneuvering, the twisting of the proper dials, the right tools disposed, that small flame can become a howling inferno, an unstoppable, blind force of purest will, purest might.
I fear this flame. I fear the success it can bring, should it be fueled. Now, for a few weeks now, I have come to terms with the notion of failure. I fancy, now, that failure is in the eye of the beholder, resting next to beauty and success.
Every single action I undertake can be seen as a failure. Getting up in the morning, going to work without eating anything, can be seen as a failure to follow the simple suggestions of nutritionists the world over to stoke the engines, get things moving, lose weight faster, burn future intake better, have more energy more often, live longer, be more alert, et fucking cetera.
Success means I got out of bed in the first place, having passed out in a drunken stupor not two hours earlier, by some miracle heeding even one of the three separate alarm clocks.

I choose success. I choose to view the chaotic swirl of events, of stimuli, that is life and look at it as the positive progression from one spot to the next, one perfect frame of being, ever passing through the fulcrum point of quality, to the next.
Pretty much, suck it up, stay neutral but forward looking, mind that which has already come to pass, dig in behind your chosen principles, maintain an avenue upon which to retreat to new or better principles, should they present an overall more feasible or simply better MO.

T. A. Edison tried over one thousand times to invent the lightbulb. Finally, at the debut of a working prototype, he was asked if the end result was worth so many frustrating defeats. He responded to the affect that had he not stumbled down the path of the thousand mishaps, he would never have reached the final destination, success. So buck up, olde boy, and go for a run.

Ah yes, two and a half miles in twenty minutes. But, twenty minutes of yoga, a hundred pushups, throughout the day. Not spectacular, but getting there.