a thousand miles

Year Six - Week 20 – October 13, 2003

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and so shall my return to writing with a single word. It sounds easy enough, but it isn’t. My mind is pea soup and my fingers are numb. I sit at the computer and stare at a blank screen. Then I realize the cats are hungry, the dishwasher must be unloaded, and the bed sheets need changing. Even phone calls are welcome. Yesterday I spoke to a credit card sales person for five minutes before realizing what I was doing.

When you’ve got a block, they say just write about having nothing to say. Well, who the hell are ‘they’ anyway? I have nothing to say to them, that’s for sure, and even if I did, I couldn’t focus long enough to write it. What good could come from writing about not being able to write?

I can't write. I can't write. I can't write.

How do ‘they’ know you should write about not writing when you can’t write?

Okay, I did manage to get out a weekly journal posting, but it was painful. My novel needs tweaking and several short stories require repair, but I can’t face doing the work. Today I went to the movies. Tonight I’ll watch the baseball playoffs, and of course I’ll feed the cats and unload the dishwasher.

Last week in a bold attempt to avoid doing any writing, I upgraded my Pro Tools Recording Software to the latest Mac operating system called Jaguar. Five days after I bought the package, Apple announced the upcoming release of Panther, Mac’s next version. It arrives in stores at the end of the month.

You can’t win with software, but I put off doing the OS X conversion for over a year and figured now that I was just sitting around moping, I might as well get it done. I’ll skip Panther (unless I’m entitled to a free upgrade) and wait for the next improvement – perhaps it will be called Leopard, or White Tiger in honor of the Las Vegas mauling.

Digressions and tangents keep me from getting any writing done, but it does help me to forget about the divorce. Don’t get the wrong impression, it’s not all fun and games here. I did go to Staples and buy a package of pocket sized notebooks in the event an idea hit. Now I have no excuses. I placed those pads strategically throughout the house. I also put one in the car, the gym bag, several jacket pockets, two briefcases and a backpack. I also a bought case of golf pencils and stuck one inside the wire coil of each pad. Of course the first decent idea I got came while I was taking a shower. Do they make water proof notepads?

Fortunately, since then, ideas have struck at other times and I now have a stack of paper on the desk filled with my scribble. At some point I’ll make sense out of them, but for the moment, it’s just about getting through the day one word at a time.