HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Saturday, January 13, 2007Whiny Whining
I don't know what the hell's going on with me. It seems like it's taking me more and more energy to drag even the smallest bit of writing out of me. I sit down at the computer and get up two hours later with nothing to show for it except a fuller knowledge of what anonymous strangers think of the latest issue of Teen Titans.
Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe the fat around my waist has metastasized to my brain and I'll soon be able to accomplish no greater mental feat than to figure out what time Lost comes on. I've already documented in great detail the various and sundry ways 2006 sucked ass. But it shouldn't take that fucking long to recover from a soul-crushing year. So what the hell can I do to get back some of my creative energy? (And even non-creative, seeing as how I also haven't felt motivated to put my shoes away and they're constantly getting under my wife's feet.) Maybe there's some kind of holistic approach. A tea, perhaps. I know it won't be Enviga, the "calorie-burning" canned green tea non-sensation from Nestle. When I was doing some Christmas shopping last month, there were a couple of guys passing out free cans of this shit outside of Lincoln Center. When you're walking along with shopping bags and somebody hands you a can, you just kind of naturally take it and drop it in the bag, right? I remember being surprised by the can when I got back to the apartment. I threw it in the fridge and it sat there until about a week and a half ago when I had a mighty thirst going and nothing else with which to quench it but the Enviga and five cans of pineapple juice. Let me just say that Enviga is disgusting. It tastes something along the lines of what you might get if you kept a teabag and a bottle of St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin in a sheep's bladder for a week and then poured it into a tin cup. The stuff doesn't so much burn calories as it keeps you slim by making you vomit. So what else could I do, here? I know running is supposed to be a good way to boost endorphins and energy levels and all that happy shit. The trouble is, my wife and I have been just about the worst runners ever over the last month or so. We get up at the ass-crack of dawn so I can take care of the dogs and she can begin her hour-and-a-half mega-trek to her job. Then I deal with junior high-schoolers all day and she deals with environmental scofflaws before making her two-hour return trip. By the time we get home, we're both cranky and tired and the idea of dragging our asses to the park for a run is about as appealing as the notion of putting an angry muskrat down our pants. On the weekends, we're pros. We're out there running our asses off. But the weekdays are hard, man. They're just hard. I guess I could join a writers' group or something. Having a bunch of peers judge your work once a week would probably be good motivation to keep my nose to the grindstone. But I don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of twenty-somethings whose work is five times stronger than mine. So I guess I don't know what the solution is. I guess I just try to put myself on a schedule, like I'm able to do during the summer, and make sure that I'm writing every day. Cut back on television; cut back on web-surfing. Set deadlines for myself. Or I could just chuck the whole thing and accept the fact that I'm never going to do anything more important than producing a show in the Fringe Festival. Sweet Jesus, folks, I'm sorry. I'm not nearly as depressed or despairing as this may sound. I'm gonna go ahead and chalk this up to post-holiday blues. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a three-day weekend to waste.
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