1Charles Bukowski was a 20th century American writer and poet
2known for his unfiltered, potent, and often crude takes on life.
3Bukowski was born in Germany in 1920 and then emigrated with his family to America in 1923.
4Bukowski had a horrible childhood, beaten regularly by his father starting at age 6.
5As an immigrant from Germany, Bukowski was ridiculed by other kids for his accent and clothing,
6ostracized as an outcast throughout his schooling.
7Into his teenage years, Bukowski developed a condition that covered his face with extreme acne and acne related blemishes,
8further intensifying his self-consciousness and isolation.
9The circumstances of abuse and loneliness imposed onto Bukowski as a young child and adolescent
10laid the groundwork for his perspective on life and his desire to express himself as a writer.
11In an interview much later in his life, Bukowski said that his father was a great literary teacher
12because he taught him the meaning of pain, more specifically, "pain without reason."
13"When you get the shit kicked out of you long enough..."
14"You will have a tendency to say what you really mean."
15In his 20s, after two years at college,
16Bukowski would quit school and make his first real attempt at becoming a professional writer,
17bouncing around the United States doing short-term blue-collar jobs,
18while writing hundreds of short stories.
19However, out of the hundreds of stories, only a couple during this time would go on to get published,
20and the ones that did found essentially no success.
21After a couple years, Bukowski basically stopped writing all together,
22disappointed by the publishing process and his apparent inability to write well enough to be successful.
23Bukowski would go on to work various blue-collar jobs for several years thereafter.
24Then in 1955, at 35 years old, after about 10 years of not writing,
25Bukowski nearly died from a serious bleeding ulcer.
26He survived, however. And then soon after, as fate would have it,
27Bukowski quit his job, which was at the post office at the time,
28and began writing again.
29A couple more years went by and Bukowski would publish several pieces during this time
30but still, nothing was providing much success,
31and he was forced to return to the post office of which he had originally quit.
32Counter to the original time, though, this time, Bukowski continued writing while at the post office.
33Before his shift, he would use whatever time he had to write.
34Bukowski would continue in this for many years,
35getting a collection of pieces published here and there in underground magazines.
36All with very little success.
37With no real sight of success or money or fame or even just creating a living from writing,
38Bukowski continued writing nearly every day before work for years.
39Of course, we know how Bukowski's story ended.
40He is being spoken about right now as a writer.
41A renowned, successful, and important enough one to be spoken about with significance decades after his passing,
42to be considered one of the greats of all time.
43Bukowski, however, didn't end up becoming traditionally or publicly successful until he was into his 50s,
44many more years into the second stint of working at the post office.
45Only after a long, continued attempt at writing did Bukowski's work finally become noticed and appreciated by an audience,
46and only after a deal with a publisher who agreed to fund Bukowski's work, did Bukowski begin to make any sort of living from it.
47At 50 years old, on the tail end of the traditional career timeline,
48Bukowski got his first real shot and took it.
49After it would seem like to many that it was over, it began.
50And he would soon become increasingly successful and famous in the literary world, and culture at large, not long after.
51It took Bukowski years and years of writing and toiling and trying
52to finally have circumstances workout in his favor so he could gain traction and find success as a writer.
53To get what he wanted since he was a teenager and fulfill what he believed his life was for.
54In this, it is at least initially perplexing that his gravestone reads right now, "Don't Try."
55A message that seems rather grim, especially for a gravestone, as well as counterintuitive to his story.
56How could a man who became successful in fulfilling his idea of himself.
57A man who, although it took a while, found immense respect and recognition for his craft,
58all because of his relentless trying;
59how could this man leave the words, "Don't try." as his final offering?
60Arguably, perhaps this is where the most important idea can be found,
61not only in Bukowski's work, but in Bukowski's life.
62In a letter to William Packard, a publisher, friend, and fellow writer,
63Bukowski wrote, "Too many writers write for the wrong reasons."
64"They want to get famous or they want to get rich"
65"or they want to get laid by the girls with the bluebells in their hair..."
66"When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing, but because writing chose you."
67"It's when you're mad with it."
68"When it's stuffed in your ears, nostrils, under your finger nails."
69"It's when there's no hope but that."
70In this letter, Bukowski is referring to aspiring writers,
71but he's arguably referring to something much larger.
72The notion of purpose and success and creative endeavors in general.
73When you were very young and someone asked you for the first time what your favorite color was
74and you decided that it was blue or red or whatever else.
75Perhaps it felt like a choice but it wasn't really.
76No one chooses how colors make them feel and why some seem to paint onto the brain with better feelings than others.
77We can describe the reasons why we like the colors we like, but we can't choose why we do.
78The color, sort of, chooses us.
79In a relatively low stakes situation like our favorite color,
80it's easy to just realize which one feels best and declare it without trying.
81How one defines their purpose and carries out the bulk of their life, however, is not so easy nor so low stakes,
82making it inevitably more complicated, convoluted and challenging.
83Although, perhaps it is, at its core, somewhat the same as knowing your favorite color.
84In the same letter to Packard, Bukowski went on to say,
85"We work too hard, we try too hard. Don't try, don't work."
86"It's there, looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb."
87In this, Bukowski alludes to the idea that if you have to try to try.
88If you have to try to care about something, or have to try to want something,
89perhaps you don't care about it and perhaps you don't want it.
90Perhaps it isn't your favorite color.
91Throughout his life, Bukowski constantly returned to writing,
92never reducing or modifying his voice for the sake of something else.
93Never letting the rejection or the suffering throughout the process ultimately take writing away from him.
94It's not that Bukowski didn't try, it's that he didn't try to be something that he wasn't.
95He tried to be a writer, but he didn't try to want to try to be a writer,
96nor did he try to write how he wanted to write.
97He just did it and kept on doing it.
98At least creatively, we seem to often perform at our best when we are ourselves, natural and honest,
99attending to who we really are and what we really want to say or do,
100without the addition of ulterior motives.
101Without forcing it or overthinking too much.
102And perhaps this is, in part, what Bukowski meant.
103Truthfully, no one other than Bukowski can say or know exactly what Bukowski ever really thought or meant in anything.
104And none of this is to suggest that something as hard and complicated as purpose and passion and desire and success is easy or prescribable.
105Because it isn't.
106It's all as unclear and complicated as the very brain that contrives the whole system.
107And it's not as if writing, or film making, or painting, or making music or business or whatever else
108must come easy to the writer or film maker or painter or musician etc.
109In order for it to be the right thing or for them to be great at it.
110But it is likely, however, that if the pain and endurance of working through the process does not feel worth it,
111and you are not compelled to do it even in the face of rejection or hardship or sacrifice,
112then perhaps it is here where Bukowski might say, don't try.
113But if it does. If the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of potentially suffering through the process.
114If the thought of a life without it, or never having tried it at all, terrifies you.
115If it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you're not trying,
116perhaps Bukowski might say here; "Try!"
117and "if you're going to try, go all the way."