It sprouts in your mind like crusty starlight, the beginning of something new and beautiful, an idea--the manifestation of potential perfection within your mind. This is something you intimately understand, the first step into a future you could be proud of. A future that you know you can achieve. But your mind holds you back. It blocks you from the wellspring of creativity you know you possess, and with every attempt to expand, it strikes with a fanatical glee. You wish for a metaphysical crack, but there is only an all-encompassing nothing. You want to write, but how could you succeed when all you see is an empty page.

You hope it breaks.

The week hits you hard, sapping the life from your bones, and the endurance from your brain while you toil on the page. Your time is limited, with every passing second the deadline inches closer and closer. This is your penultimate moment, you know if you can't finish the piece, you'll never achieve anything. It will fail; you will become the avatar of fail. The only option left is to write, motivating yourself with the crippling fear.

Please, let it break.

Within your mind's eye, you see a horn that sparkles with liquid lightning, the creature it's attached to is sickly, a Unicorn that rides the line between shame and beauty. It's a concept you're familiar with, and you live it daily. The reminder stares back at you each morning, a reflection of who you are in the present. Who will the Unicorn be? All you need to do is look in the mirror and see.

You can't fail this way!

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Your scribbles begin to encompass the page. It's the beginning of your future art, an awakening to the core hiding within your brain. It's reminiscent of a slow-release, you've always felt it through life. The essence is there, colouring what you experience through the day: the job that barely pays, the family that turns away, and the only friend that bothered to stay. It's miserable. This is your lot in life, a futureless wretch with only one thing to say, "I can't waste time today!"

Work, please work.

Your story's amorphous core begins to shape as you pen your ideas onto the page. It's catharsis, one earned through every word you write, and with every sentence you create. The piece is an unravelling of your brain, a fragment of your blood and soul contained into a physical state. This is the life you want. The experience you will achieve. All you have to do is to continue writing.

You're close, just a bit more.

As you write, you pluck the small moments out of your life, the ones relevant for the short-story you have begun to write. The story is yours, every plot-point, every word, and every centimetre of paper is tied to your soul. This is the true beauty of art, an inherently personal thing. The grand design of it all is elusive, barely perceptible to your mind's eye. You're still an amateur after-all. 

Don't stop. Never stop.

Sleeplessness injects into your veins like viscous wine, there's only one page to go, and your work will be complete. The future continues to evade your sight, but now you have a firmer hold on what it can be, and the road to making it a reality. Your fingers tremble with pride as a smile cracks across your face. It's the weight that has lightened your shoulders and heated your brain. This is who you are, who you want to be, and who you wish to express. It's you're hope for the future, your beast of burden.

Hallelujah.