Whoa-oh, I've Been Banging My Head Against The Wall

If you write, surely you've encountered the dreaded writer's block.  Any tips?

I've tried everything!  I rubbed peanut butter on my feet and slid around with my eyes closed, a method that was dictated to me by the stoned ghost of e.e. cummings in a dream the other night.

I tried combining ideas of poor girlish storytelling with mythical creatures, and threw in some bad dialogue for good measure.  Stephanie Meyer told me that this is what she used to get rid of the writer's block she had right before she wrote her hit series.  And that failed.  I'm glad that method failed actually.

I've even tried slamming my head against beautiful works of art.  The theory, generated by Isaac Asimov to solve his very rare cases of writer's block, states that as the density of the writer's head and the density of a work of art approach equal values, inspiration is more easily transferred from the work of art into the head of the disgruntled writer via osmosis.  I tried paintings, novels, CD's, and finally realized that Isaac Asimov got all of his ideas from concussive dreams.  Allow me to elaborate via doodles:

 (Sorry about the blurriness, the post-its on the right say "You're in a concussive dream!  And I am the harp player!  RULE #1 OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY: 'NO DREAM SEQUENCES WITHOUT HARP MUSIC!'")

(Sorry again, the long quote on the right says "What is black, white, with a red beak and feet, and two black holes for eyes?  A penguin that manifests Evan's inability to draw!  Ha Ha Ha Ha) 

So you can see how his theory originated.  No one is going to find any piece of art that is as hard as their skull, except for a sculpture or statue.  So, when hitting something as hard as a statue, one will surely pass out in a concussive state.  Then all sorts of crazy stuff happens when our brain tries to sort it out.  And that is how Isaac Asimov came up with all of his zany sci-fi stories.  Well it worked for him.  It's not like his method gave me an entire blog post to rant or create something witty, like my blog posts usually are.

Bellybuttons?  Harp players?  Poorly illustrated penguins?  A stereo saying "UN-TISS"?  Seriously, what a stupid dream.  Most of my blog posts are about things that annoy me...and the stupidity of that dream and theory is so overwhelming.

Hey, wait a minute!  I wrote a whole blog post, with pictures and anger and everything!  Isaac Asimov cured my writer's block so well I didn't even know it was gone!

Clever guy.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Sometimes I get into a mood where I have nothing to write about but I know I want to write, so I'm gonna write about something.

I've decided to write about a few of my favorite things, and I guess I'll just do a list.

1.) Drinking blistering hot tea on a blistering cold day.  Hot chocolate works too.

2.)  Getting lost in conversation and forgetting that I'm writing a blog post, only to return to it a half hour later.

3.)  Family on Christmas.

4.)  Driving by myself through the country with music on.

5.)  Imagining my future spouse and places we'll go.

6.)  Wireless internet.

7.)  The phenomenon of frequencies and the capabilities in music they create.

8.)  Chicken and Dumplings

9.)  Dogs that remember you from 10 years ago even though you've only seen them sporadically since them

10.)  Drums and guitar

11.)  Led Zeppelin

12.)  Advances in living conditions that we have in America that many places do not have

13.)  Northside Diner breakfast in Chesteron, IN.  If you're ever in Chesterton, go here.

14.)  Writing fiction stories, songs, poems, and blog posts

15.)  Being different

16.)  That sore feeling after you work out and your muscles ache the next day

17.)  A good pair of slippers that are warm and cushy, especially in winter time

18.)  Songs that aren't created from a popular music template.

19.)  The phoenix rebirth that comes with time after a breakup.

20.)  The contentment of a relationship.

21.)  Praying to God like He's next to you

22.)  Corny jokes and silly movies

23.)  Spoons

24.)  Comraderie in my band.

25.)  Old friends

26.)  New friends

27.)  People I don't get along with

28.)  People I meet and feel at home with instantly

29.)  Soccer

30.)  Demerol and other pain medications when you go to the hospital

31.)  Getting punched for real, and being proud of the bruise

32.)  Slap Club.  Think Fight Club but for girls.

33.)  Making Youtube videos

34.)  Being random and sporadic and making a blog post out of it

35.)  Facebook notifications when I get online

36.)  Getting things in the mail

37.)  Trying to do car maintenance.  Emphasis on TRYING.

38.)  Knowing I'll one day be the dad that knows lots about how to fix stuff.

39.)  Looking around the room to find something else that is my favorite.

40.)  Failing, and ending this post.

Burn Me Down

Is it wee-ud to go to a graveyard just for fun?

Well, if so, that's okay.  My older posts have established that I am wee-ud.

Back in the summer, I was dating this girl, and while dating her, I came up with the idea to go to a graveyard just to look at the headstones, contemplate time and life and death, and appreciate the vast expanses of land that rarely get visited.  Romance, eh?

Well, I screwed up again, and I now have more X's than Texas.  Which...I suppose means 2 x's...hmm.

Whatever.

So I didn't do the graveyard thing with Ex-GF-003, the code name I have assigned her.  But I made newer, cooler friends that are girls and I went with them!  Erin, Katharyn, and I piled in my stylish 1998 Saturn SL-2, and drove in search of some dead real estate.

Heh, see what I did there?

Fine, it wasn't my best effort.

Well, we found some, and wandered around for awhile.  Most of the things that I said were ignored by my friends, as I was the boy and the outsider of the group, but that's okay.  I wanted some time to myself anyways to just think about everything.  Some things that occurred to me:

First, there were tons of enormous headstones, beautiful works of art to say the least.  One of the most ornate that I saw belonged to a preacher.  And that got me thinking...a preacher with a boisterous headstone?  How much money was spent on the luxurious headstones in that cemetery (and many of them contained Christian inscriptions) and how opposite is the idea of adorning ourselves with greatness from the idea of subjecting ourselves to God's love?

I mean, I'd prefer a small stone with a hand-engraven name, years, and motto perhaps, and the rest of the exuberant spending should go to something worthy.  Like people.  Poor people, loved ones, anything.  Just not into a big rock that people never look at except to think of me.  And if they know me, won't anything with my name on it remind them of me?

See?  I bet that reminded you of me.

Another thing that stood out to me was the social status of headstones in cemeteries.  Me and my dynamic duo of dames were looking at the small headstones, with our eyes to the ground.  Katharyn loves World War II, so we were looking for male deaths near 1945, who were born around 1910-1925.  Generally speaking, those men would have died in battle or from wounds in battle.  And before we realized it, the small humble markers we were perusing led us to some larger ones.  We still had more names to peruse, but we skipped over them, saying "Oooh! Look at this one!"  And we skipped right over the remaining humble headstones.  Talk about life and death being the same, huh?

We are drawn to big things, big beautiful, gaudy things, because they are tributes to our own vanity, the vanity that lives inside us like a greedy baby grabbing for food from someone else's plate.  Even in death, some are passed over because what they have to show for themselves pales in comparison to that which others have to offer.  How unfair.  I know I don't want to be remembered or attractive because I have something expensive and impressive that other people are drawn to.  I want to be magnetic because I try to be a good human being and a good Christian who lives for God and others...not because I invest my death dollars in slabs of limestone with Roman pillars cut into the sides, or a humongous two-story cross that stands above all else.

And the societal ranking goes farther.  While some settled for large headstones that stand 10 feet or higher, some families built mausoleums.  Freaking huts of stone, to hold their rotting bones.  How vain is one that they can't settle to be buried in the ground, so they build a big box with a wrought-iron door and shingles to store their husks in?  In the moment, I was drawn to these structures of the afterlife, wowed by their sense of royalty and class.  Now, I realize how wasteful and stupid it really is. 

Heck, burn me.  Just set me on fire, and spread my ashes wherever you deem fit.  My body is useless, and the only thing that matters about it is inside it as temporary housing: my soul.  My soul is secure, and when I die an Earthly death, I don't care about what is done to my body.  Feed it to a whale or a hungry pack of wolves.  Just don't spend money on a huge tomb or a gaudy headstone that says "Look at me.  I'm rich even in my death."

What's the point of putting anything on a headstone? 

One final note...the inferiority of the headstone.  It has a name, and a set of years.  I find it unfortunate that people who die end up devoid of a story on their headstone.  I'd like to think I'm more interesting than my name and birthdate/deathdate can tell.  Everyone is!  So I think we should all write a little letter describing ourselves and what we learned during life, and include a picture, and that would be sealed in glass and placed where a lame headstone would go.

Now I'm curious...what would your letter say?  And what would you look like in your picture?  If you read this, comment below with your answer.  I'd love to hear from my small band of followers!

For A Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic

Whoo!  I could make this a monster post, but I believe I shall split it into two.  Or as the little Asian boy at the Chinese buffet said when we asked him to divide the check into separate meals, because mine was more expensive than the other two since I ordered a Mountain Dew, "I'll just sprit it into free..."

But really, just two posts.

The first post is a follow-up to the oh-so uplifting post about my medication.

I have found some contentment in the midst of my conditioning to be unwell without my Zoloft.  For the past two days or so, things have just been good.  I have found that a 50mg pill of Zoloft compares pitifully to 50 seconds of human contact.  The last two days have been filled with friends, old and new, and I think that is something no psychiatrist with impressive office furniture can prescribe.

Further, as I write this, I'm sitting across from my friend Jackie.  It seems silly to whine about how not having my medication messes me up when I think about Jackie.  Jackie has fought cancer and surgeries her whole life practically, since she was two years old.  I just asked her because I forgot how many, but she has had 38 surgeries.  She runs a mental inventory and confirms, yes, 38 surgeries.  She's got two more slated for the future, so soon she'll be over the hill in surgery years.

A few days ago we talked about our medications, and I pulled out my main gun, Zoloft, 50mg.  Fear me.  She then discussed her multiple medications, some of which were 8 times the concentration of mine, 400mg.  I just looked up from my keyboard and screen to chat a bit about the chemistry she is trying to accomplish, and I see her one real eye, hazel and dark, as it moves like a real eye does.  Next to it she has a fake eye, hazel and dark, but still and unmoving.  Below that fake eye, she has a metal rod that has to be adjusted every year, and when it is adjusted, it expands her jawbone.  When she was young, a surgery messed up part of her jawbone, I believe removing a section.  So the doctors are now gradually stretching out the remaining bone.

Despite all of this, Jackie is beautiful.  I don't mean like, write a love song about her beauty, but just as a human being.  The love song beauty is superficial, and too many love song beauties have no substance to them.  But human beauty is pervasive, it doesn't stop to check its hair in the mirror, it doesn't put on lipstick or indulge in any of the commonplace vanities.  She is interesting, because she is rather unique at this Christian school.  She swears relatively often, she has doubts about God, and she makes jokes about drinking and other unmentionables.  She doesn't let the fact that her past is full of gurnies and anesthesia stop her from making her future about being alive and alert.  She does have veins of sadness like me, and thus I can easily relate to her.

But anyhow, this is just an update, as I'm sure you're all very concerned about my moodswings (well, I know some good friends are, and those reading this know who they are).  I'm doing better.  I'm getting sick, but health wouldn't be appreciated if we never got sick.  I'm looking forward to getting over this because it will just help me appreciate things more in general.

People Are Strange

Continuing in the vein of how humans are weird, I have another thought for the books.

Sitting at a dinner table with some friends, who were all girls, conversation began to develop on how to be friends with a boy who makes advances at you, and to do so without leading him on.

We were talking about all sorts of covert operations, mind games, try-this's and try-that's and one girl, Becky, suggests in a comically obvious tone, "Or you could just say, 'Hey, I have no intentions other than to be your friend.'"  I agree with her and joke some and the rest of the table thinks it's too awkward to do that.

I was largely quiet for much of the conversation as I had been thinking.  I piped up after enough time of consideration and told a story similar to Erin's, the girl who brought it all up in the first place.  I met a girl recently who I didn't know at all really.   And I'll be a son of a gun, but after one good and meaningful conversation with this person, she now has a thing for me.  Or that's the term the kids use these days.

As I offered this to the Council of Estrogen, I struck upon a deeper point.  What does it even take for humans to become attracted these days?  I'm certainly no exception, as discussed in a recent post, to STD, or Sudden Truelove Disorder.  And it's ridiculous.  While I get hung up on a cute smile or a winning laugh, sometimes I find myself frustrated that people want to take something big out of a meaningful conversation.  I think the reason it bugs me is because it suggests that we have learned that meaningful conversations with people are uncommon, and something special because we don't have them often.  Thus, legitimate conversations seem like a huge deal, and that bugs me.  If meaningful sharing is grounds for romance, then you and I are meant to be, because I discuss some pretty serious stuff here.

I suppose overall it bums me out, because humans have come to think that good conversations are something to cherish.  I think they're meaningful enough to be cherished, but many times things are cherished because they're rare.  I think that's the case with this situation.  We feel attracted to those who we have deep conversations with because everyone else is so abstract and distanced from everyone else...that's sad in my opinion.  I feel like we all keep to ourselves too much.  Meaningful conversations with beautiful strangers should take place everyday.

Don't Try To Wake Me Up, Even If The Sun Really Does Come Out Tomorrow

Humans are weird.  I'm a human.  I am weird.

We're all weird for many reasons, but one reason I'm weird is because I'm so decidedly flip-floppy in my disposition.  I have enjoyed the last few days, wondering why some people can be disappointed with life.  It's full of free things.  Snow recently came to visit my college.  That is free.  The wind that bites my face and gives me a newfound appreciation for the mere existence of four walls and a roof, that's free.  Smiles from strangers, waves from friends, those are free.

Now, today, I'm stuck upon a hitch that has me thinking in the dumps.  I spent my lunch alone in a corner of the cafeteria, listening to music, ashen-faced while people moved about around me.  I didn't move, just listened to my music and sipped tenderly from the blazing hot cocoa that I made by the coffee station.  I was in there for a good two hours, just thinking about many things yet coming to no real cogent thoughts.

Sometimes I find myself wishing I could walk up to a perfect stranger and just give them a hug.  It'd be just as much about getting a hug as it would about giving.  I dont know why I think that, I think it's because I feel urged to believe that humans can not only coexist, but co-thrive.  We seem to co-thrive in every way except emotionally.  Any given room of people is full of dozens of different problems and grievances inside the hearts of those that occupy said room, and very few of the people know about each other's problems.  What's more is that they don't even look to see if anyone else is hurting like them.

I find myself losing motivation to do anything.  I have nothing to do until 4 pm, except to write a paper for the class I have at 4.  And yet here I sit, whining to the internet and 10 people.  I suppose maybe this is one step closer to the room that is my blog becoming less of a room full of strangers.

I don't mean to come across as a whiny girl who does that stuff on facebook like

"Wow, great...another WONDERFUL day...why does this always have to happen to me?"

It's in pink because it's a girl.

People that do that crap online leave it vague enough to prompt questions from their BFF's and relatives, but make it specific enough so that whoever is responsible for making them unhappy know it's all their fault.

But yeah, I don't mean to come across like that.  I guess this is my therapy, wondering things aloud.  I suppose it beats other therapies, chemical therapies.  I have one 50mg lifeline of Zoloft to last me a week.  That therapy is failing me slowly as the serotonin is re-uptaken by my synapses quicker than it should, quicker than the medication lets it when I have a steady flow of the small blue tablet.  This is why I didn't want the damn things in the first place.  They become the deciding factor in a good or bad day.  After I stop taking them, I have about 1-2 days before the high that normal people call normal disappears.

I know that God has given me this heavy case of dysthemia so that I can relate to others who have it, so that I can think like a broken person works so that I can help them and love them.  But what happens when I find myself broken?  When your car breaks you don't go find other cars to work on.  When your coffee maker doesn't work, you don't spend time making sure the refrigerator won't break down soon.  You just want to fix that which is yours, and that which is broken.

So what happens when I feel broken? How do I help others when my selfish self wants only to fix myself, but I can't, because a psychiatrist, who gives out prescription slips like golden tickets to the happy factory, decided that I too can enjoy the bliss of terminal codependency on something so tiny but so decisive.

I'm not sure how to go about ending something that has been so completely downhill.  Maybe that's what some people who get really really depressed, farther than I've ever been, think about their life.