Friday, July 07, 2006

Finding the Words

I had a long day at work yesterday, and frankly, I am whipped today. But I have been wanting to write for days, and actually have taken stabs at starting writing something numerous times in the past few days but nothing has really gelled beyond being anything more than mildly cute, possibly thought provoking, but definitely uninspiring. It is only because of my sons' swimming lesson being cancelled today that I have found time to sit at the laptop before going to work. Someone posted an anonymous comment recently telling me they enjoyed my posts and encouraged me to write more. I am truly grateful and their could have been no higher compliment. But unfortunately, I have hit some sort of wall. I am not a natural writer. It takes me a long time to write something that someone else can probably whip out in minutes. That is because there is a bottleneck somewhere in my brain between the parts where I think thoughts and the place where I find the ability to organize them before actually expressing them.

Organization has always been an issue with me. I like things to be in their proper places; that includes things and thoughts. But if I cannot find the perfect place for something, or if a place does not exist for something, the item or thought at hand seems to get placed on the desktop of my life. As this theoretical desktop gets more and more cluttered, I get more and more apprehensive and feel like I am about to drown in a flood of unaccomplished chores, unopened mail, unfinished home improvement projects, etc... My arcane 1 bit processor gets overheated. Then there is the crash and reboot. I lash out at my wife for the messy living room, yell at my five year old for playing too many video games (which I bought for him, of course), open all my mail, shredding most of it and get even more angry at myself because I temporarily lost the Best Buy bill and realize I now will be hit with a late fee and lose my 0% financing on the stereo amplifier and new speakers I probably should not have purchased six months ago but absolutely love. I frantically go on a cleaning spree, vacuuming and dusting as my wife ignores me, find some project to do with my son so he knows I care and call Best Buy reminding them what a good customer I am and blame the US Postal Service for late mail that wasn't. Satisfied that a few things are taken care of, the cycle of cluttering and clearing the desktop begins again.

I guess, what I am trying to say is that I seem to be able to accomplish things only in spurts of frenzied activity driven by guilt of inaction. This post is in the same vein. I made a commitment to write and now blogging is another icon my cluttered desktop. Hopefully, I will soon post entries in the near future on someone whom I consider a true hero, on a recent movie experience I had with my son, on my love of music, on issues of world trade... but for now, my desktop is cluttered with everything and nothing at all. With any luck, the downstairs bathroom will get remodeled soon, I will get my paperwork current, I will be able to get my son to his swimming lessons on time instead of 6 minutes late like yesterday, and yes, the game of Twister being played in my brain will end soon and I will find the words again.

1 Comments:

Blogger AppleLina said...

there are few in this world that are as organized as they'd like to be and those that are - are not busy, have 100 hired hands (Martha Stewart) or belong to the elite 1% that actually can - do it all.

but I'd ask you - is it that the words are not coming/flowing or that you don't have the time? I'd guess it's the latter.

Don't worry - your readers faithfully will come even if you take breaks - write when it's fun for you or cathartic for you. It all flows in time.

You are a natural writer. Like a lot of aspiring writers, you have a million ideas - you just haven't put the words to them - yet.

Saturday, July 08, 2006  

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