On Bukowski’s grave are the words ‘Don’t try’, an epitaph that leaves much room for interpretation. This coming from a man who wrote for decades without compensation, who dared to suffer for his craft, and who was also a loser by society’s standards.
Yet I can’t help feeling a connection with the Buk. He was a loner, I’m a loner. He loved drinking, I love drinking. He quit writing for 10 years, and I’m… well…
I’ve written all I need to write, and now there’s a lack of life to sustain the output. I don’t feel what I write anymore, and that’s a problem. Because how do I coax feelings out of you when I don’t feel anything myself?
Weirdly enough, I’m not trying to write this piece right here. The words are just seeping through, like steam escaping a kettle.
But I’ve tried, too. I’ve written several novels and thousands of articles, all of which have never seen the light of day. I’ve wrung my brain dry only to stash my words in the Drafts folder.
I’ve tried at my job and at sports. I’ve tried in relationships: I bit my tongue when I had something to say, smiled when I was sad, said I was fine when I really wasn’t. And all I got was a participation trophy.
But I’ve also not tried. I called her my moon and she called me romantic. I mentioned stealing pens and she laughed till she cried. I never tried to be romantic or funny, but was seen as such.
What, then, does it mean to try? Because if Fate sees fit to give or take as she pleases, why am I going against all that I am just so that I could squeeze into a square hole?
So perhaps ‘don’t try’, in this context, doesn’t mean forgoing effort. Maybe it means ‘don’t be who you’re not’.
It means not writing if you’ve fallen out of love with the craft, no matter how much you’ve built your identity around it. It means choosing other hard things — like running every day — because it doesn’t feel like trying. It means accepting the good and bad of any pursuit, especially the bad.
So maybe writing is going to take a back seat. Or maybe it’ll take centre stage. I don’t know. Because for the first time in a long while, I’m finally going to stop trying.
“Somebody at one of these places asked me: ‘What do you do? How do you write, create?’ You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more.” —Charles Bukowski
Stuart Danker 
I’d love to hear your thoughts!