Writing About Writing (To Keep From Writing)

            This is the paragraph where I'm required to berate myself for my lack of consistency in posting (which is undoubtedly shameful) and give a list of excuses for my absence. Excuses that include added responsibilities at work, the holidays, being a new father, travel, a variety of personal issues and struggles which I am in different levels of defeating, laziness, writer's block, and a host of other semi-true explanations which I could summon under pressure. When I was a young and reckless bachelor living in squalor in a 70-year old garage apartment with no climate control, a refrigerator empty of all but alcohol, a pantry empty of all but peanut butter, and a schedule empty of all but work, writing came easy. Every day after work I would sit on my couch that smelled of sweet tobacco smoke (it used to belong to my grandfather's office) low to the floor (I had knocked the legs off to get it in the door and never reattached them) and sit my laptop with the melted "F" key (due to a cigarette cherry) and the upside down "4" key (due to my cat scratching some of my keys off) and write. I'd write a blog post, a short story, a cryptic rumination, a fairy tale, or any other tale from any other genre I could imagine. I'd sit down and place my hands upon the keys and the words would begin to flow without effort. It wasn't that everything (or anything) I wrote was good, it was that it was the natural overflow that spilled forth when I was alone.

               Getting married changed that. After marriage I was rarely alone, for obvious reasons. We spent about 22 1/2 hours a day together for the first year. After that Mag started working a different job and while we spent less time together, nevertheless I was only alone and at home for about one hour a day. Spending my days at work listening to various podcasts, radio shows, and music, and then spending my time at home with my wife, left little time for creativity or creative output. I've had to force myself to write, and I do it at different times with varying degrees of vigor. I'll tell myself, "You have to start writing more" and do so for about a month and then trickle off again. I'll set up constructs for myself (such as the idea of a, "Fatherhood" blog) in order to chain myself to the idea of a goal and a deadline in hopes my output will increase. Sometimes I'll think, "Well if you have to force yourself to do it, maybe you shouldn't be doing it." I never think, "Come on Andrew, you haven't played video games in awhile, you really need to start doing that more." I suppose writing feels like something healthy, in a way. It feels more akin to saying, "You should spend more time outdoors" than it does to, "You should watch more movies."

                  The birth of Boone gave me even another reason not to write. Not only am I not home as much as I used to be (for example, today was my day off and I spent a good deal of it running errands, watching him while Mag was at the doctor, and then going with him to his hearing test and sitting in a hospital waiting room for eternity) but when I am home I am with him. He either requires my attention (and he can be quite insistent) or he's being sweet and peaceful and I just want to hold him and stare at him and attempt to burn every facial expression he makes onto my memory for all time. I took a shower the other night and turned on Monday Night Football and lay on my back on the couch with Boone lying face down on my bare chest. He would pick up his head and look and me and scratch my chest and make weird sounds. I don't know that I would have spent that time writing but I do know that spending time with him makes three hours feel like thirty minutes.

                 My iPod broke recently and I've been using Mag's while I work (because I like rocking out on a pink mp3 player. Makes me look all sensitive (and gay) to the ladies). The other day I forgot to charge it or something and had to go a whole day of about nine hours largely in silence. I had a lot to think about and deal with as I'm attempting to make a transition in several areas of my life and I kept my mind working at the speed which causes smoke to waft, not pour, from the ears. I realized though, that without constant input for my mind to receive and process (via the 16 or so podcasts I subscribe to) creative output began to reassert itself in my mind. I began about four blogs in my head, came up with the idea for a poem dealing with my battle with alcohol, and even wrote the chorus and three verses to an old-fashioned bluegrass song (and convinced myself I could learn the play the piano from YouTube and put music to the song by the end of the week). Now, I never wrote any of the blogs and all I did with the poem and song is scratch them down on some scrap pieces of paper and shove them in the drawer of my desk down in the basement but still. I know I would like to write more. I face the problems of lack of creativity, lack of motivation, lack of dedication, and lack of time. To make headway against even one of these is refreshing.

                I've decided to enter a writer's workshop on a website I sometimes read (the first step to eventually writing articles for the website) and am strategizing (made up word alert!) different ways to combat the other, "lack ofs" listed above. I recently acquired DVR ability with my new television service and it is a huge timesuck (did you know that Tosh.0 comes on 133 times a week and is insanely rewatchable? Did you know I have four episodes of, "Homeland" on my DVR even though I've never seen a single second of footage of the show?). I have a stack of books (that I've reduced from 17 to 6 since the beginning of the summer, but just bought another today) to read. Like I said, I want to teach myself basic piano (or basic "two hand" piano. I took two years of it as a child but could never get the hang of the left hand). I want to cuddle with my son and spend time with my wife and exercise more and visit the local ancient Indian mounds and go hiking and deep clean some areas of house and all sorts of other things. I need to figure out a better way of managing my time   and prioritizing the things I want to do in order to get them done. I'm getting better at it though! Today I watched my kid, ate roast and potatoes for brunch, and watched the documentary, "Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' With the Godmother" all at the same time!

                   I'd like to write more. I'm going to write more. It might be on this blog, it might be someplace else. I understand that this post is pointless, and circular, and contributes nothing worth reading. It really is just me writing down my thoughts on writing instead of just thinking them. I'm going to write, and if the things going through my head are as boring to other people as I'm sure this post is, I'm going to write it anyway. I considered not posting this, just writing it for the sake of writing, but I haven't posted in so long I'm going to put this up as a pathetic little place holder. For those of you who have been so kind (or so bored) as to read all the way this far, I'll grace you with a bit of information certain to blow. your. mind:

CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW BIG AUSTRALIA IS?
I thought it was like the size of about two Texases. (Texii?)

Not so impressive anymore, ARE YOU ALASKA?