"Busy "
Man have I been busy lately.
Busy busy busy busy.
Being so occupied just kills my sense of creativity. I spend all my time focused on stuff. Sometimes it’s relevant stuff. Often times not. Sometimes it’s important stuff. Most of the time - not. Work stuff. Home stuff. Personal stuff. Family stuff. I’ve been flying around the country, working on “critical” deals for IBM. I’ve had holiday travels, Christmas purchases, a busted cell phone, some screwed up shoulder tendons, the death of @home, my brother’s imminent wedding, the all too occasional day flailing on - or off - a rock, more work, more flights, more opportunities, more late nights.
It’s like a fire that has been buried beneath its fuel. You would think that with all the travels and all the chaos and all the opportunity, I would feel a sense of excitement, an urge to write, to report, to share. But really, it just left me tired. I buried my spark of creativity beneath a mountain of psychological wood. Gotta fix the furnace, gotta pay the bills. Gotta buy the presents, gotta take those pills.
Oooh, I rhymed. Maybe this creative thing is coming back…Regardless, back to the point.
The last time I wrote anything was in October. And I had to fall off a cliff and land on my head in order to do it. Yet it’s the writing that keeps me energized. It’s the sharing that keeps me excited. This literary release, this digital intimacy (to quote my flamboyant inspiration John Styn) is my form of catharsis. And in many respects, my dream for how, eventually, I would like to earn my keep. If I keep working at this, keep these fingers dancing along this keyboard, I might actually, potentially, one day, get paid to write.
And if not, I hope to have enough dough in the bank to travel and write full-time anyway, but that’s fueled largely my desire to survive off of something more nutritious than Raman noodles and the inherent materialism associated with living among the conspicuously affluent herds of laser and silicon enhanced Yuppies in Newport Beach.
Anyway, a career as a writer, regardless of how funded, is a big goal. Sadly, big goals seem awfully far away and usually appear to lie at the end of awfully difficult roads. The challenge then is finding the motivation to start down those roads. Stoking that fire. Igniting the passion. It’s awfully easy to use the routine and the mundane, the requirements and the responsibilities as an excuse to procrastinate from the seemingly daunting path that leads toward one’s aspirations.
More disturbing is how easy it becomes to expand even simple tasks to fill the allotted time. Gosh, this is important. Let’s dwell and lament about the project, the potential, the purpose, the problems, the people, until the eleventh hour. Let’s scramble rather than walk. Let’s add some logs to that fire. Let’s get busy.
And now with two or three months of dust on the keyboard, I can bitch about how busy I have become. I can be the poster boy for the perils of procrastination. I can keep running down that freeway toward a life of quiet desperation.
Well f*** that.
Sorry. A little profanity helps me focus. Get psyched up for the big game. A little psychological kick in the pants. I’m just putting on my literary game face.
Grrrrr….
So back to the keyboard! Time to punch some black plastic and kick some creative ass. Maybe I’ll even write something funny.
It’s Christmas, and the presents are purchased, the travels arranged, the flow of work reduced to a trickle. I’ll finally stoke that fire, get it burning again. I’ll start with a letter or two. Might even finish a web site – well I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.
It’s almost a new year. I don’t need resolutions. I need a map. And, occasionally, a push. So thanks for the occasional not-so-gentle reminders. Thanks for the encouragement, thanks for the support. Thanks for the time. Thanks for the love.
I expect you had a Merry Christmas. I expect you to have an amazing New Year. And I expect you to hear a lot more from me in it.
