The Gift of Quality

I've been on something of a West Wing marathon tonight.  The only DVD box set I have is The West Wing, and every now and again I'll wind up picking a few episodes and watch them.  Every time I do, I'm struck by just how well written and acted everything is.  As far as I'm concerned, it's the zenith of TV drama.  It has characters you buy into, stories which engage you, dialogue which is just fantastic, and is far and away, my favourite TV show, pretty much ever.

Watching the West Wing also makes me feel a little bit down.  Why?  Because I know I'll never create anything of that quality in my life.  It's something of a recurring theme for me, my ambitions are sadly not matched by my ability.  As I've said before in a blog, I've always had a vague idea that I'd like to be a writer, sadly, my literary skills are, at best, poor, at worst, embarrassing. I don't have the imagination of a Pratchett or Gaiman, I don't have the knack of writing witty and engaging prose of a Bryson. Sucks to be me, huh!

I have ideas all the time, I could be driving along the road and snippets of dialogue will occur to me, I could be thinking about something, or someone, and I will have imaginary conversations in my head, but somehow, when I try to write these down and then spin them into something coherent, it just doesn't happen for me.

Something similar happens when I press the button on my camera. I have ideas for grand images in my head, but somehow, when I come to take the picture, I just can't make the jump.  The effect is that reviewing my pictures tends to be an exercise in constant disappointment.

I fear, I am doomed to live a live of mediocrity. I am able to string a few words together, every now and again I get something decent, but for the vast majority of the time, my writing is bland, and very, very average.  Same with photographs, every now and again I will come up with something good (as can be seen with the photoshoot I did a couple of weeks ago, I actually got a few good shots out of it, which is something of a first for me, although that was mostly down to the model rather than me), but it's mostly very much 'meh'.

I am very jealous of those who are touched by genius, those who are able to write well, take amazing photographs, write beautiful songs. I wish I was one of them.

Sadly, I am not.