The downfall of creativity

Or maybe that’s one of the other difficulties I’ve suffered from: mucho options for distraction. Even as I type here on my laptop, I feel the urge to check my e-mail, see if I have friends on Yahoo Messenger to chat with, play World of Warcraft or maybe just putz around with Solitaire or Minesweeper while listening to MP3s that I’ve burned onto here (from my own CDs, so any feds reading this can kiss my fuzzy white behind…). For some reason, keeping my hands occupied by playing simple games helps me focus when I’m trying to think. Maybe it keeps me from scratching my crotch or picking my nose, I’m not sure, but if there’s something that’s troubling me, just load up Solitaire and play until I’m $1500 in the hole. That’s one way to brighten my day, lemme tell ya…

I’ve got bookshelves with dozens of unread books, a TV upstairs with dozens of unseen TV shows, a nose with dozens of untouched boogers… so many things that can pull me away from a simple Word document and another opportunity to let my mind wander and hope my fingers can keep up instead of getting poked with a stick, starting to hop across the road and getting run over by David Hasselhoff driving KITT on Knight Rider.

Perhaps the final problem is that after a while, I simply run out of creative juices. Part of that could be because I’m not used to sitting down at the computer and writing for hours at a time. I’ve been in my chair for… well, I neglected to look at the clock when I started writing, but I’m guessing less than an hour and a half. Now my brain is starting to slow down, my fingers are catching up and I’m thinking more like I’d rather be drinking a Dr. Pepper than contemplating its existence. I don’t think there’s an emergency break in my head—my thoughts have never stopped immediately, leaving a trail of brain juices slopped on my desk as I slump forward in my chair and smack against the keyboard, leaving a slightly asymmetrical pattern of squares imprinted on my forehead. It’s more like running out of gas, but there are no gas stations in sight. I simply have to run on fumes until there are no fumes left and the car finally sputters and dies. Then the blog entry is left where it sits, I pick up the metaphorical gas can and take off down the road with no guarantee that I won’t find a different car at the shop that I’d rather start driving. Like KITT, for example.

I almost feel like I should apologize at this point. My weekends in L.A. and Toronto shriveled up to a marginal paragraph apiece instead of the full-blown entries that they deserved. I have a story about helping out with a film that’s been sitting on the backburner… well, technically, it’s sitting alongside the road, waiting for me to come back with some more gas so I can get it cranked up and possibly reach the finish line. And that’s where all stories end, really. Where that finish line is depends entirely on the story. My weekends ended when the planes landed at the airport. My story about being an extra on the film ended at close to 5:00 in the morning when I finally got home. My story about creativity—this final product—ends here.