My Fickle Mistress

I don’t talk about my dating life in this space. It is one of a few topics that I will almost never talk about. But, I have to break my rule this one time. I am so in love with this new girl. She is so incredibly beautiful and I am CRAZY about her. I feel the need to run around and scream it from the mountain tops (god, I disgust myself). I put a picture of her at the end of the post so you call can be jealous of me.

Writing is a fickle mistress, or so the cliche goes. In my case, the lack of an actual girlfriend would make writing my fickle girlfriend? I haven’t been able to write anything coherent for two weeks. I’ve started several pieces in that time. But I would get about halfway through, read what I had written and realize it was a complete mess. So, I’d just get into bed and go to sleep.

In school, when I got stuck on a paper with “writer’s block”, I’d get up and do something else. I’d end up not starting the paper in earnest until after midnight and stay up until 4 or 5 am to bang the paper out. That wasn’t writer’s block. That was just plain laziness and procrastination. I easily could have finished those papers a day in advance if I wanted to. I work the best under pressure, and there was no pressure to finish a paper that early. Why stay in and write a paper due in two days when I could go out and get drunk tonite?

This is different. I have no deadline here. No topic that I am forced to write about. There’s no pressure to write. So I end up with a group of babbling incoherent sentences about nothing.

When something gets difficult, you force it and keep going until you get back on track. Apparently that doesn’t work for writing. If you’re churning out shit and you try to force it out, you just force more shit out. Sunday night I decided to try to write through it. I posted something and it was a complete catastrophe. I ended up taking it down the next morning. Hopefully no one read it (well, I know at least two people did).

I guess this is what the beginning stages of writer’s block feels like.

So instead of embarrassing myself and subjecting you to dreadful writing, I will send you elsewhere.

The Wire, along with The West Wing, is my favorite TV show. Like most people who watch The Wire, I was a bit disappointed by certain parts of last season (although, the last few episodes made up for much of it). David Simon wrote a piece on the Huffington Post defending his work. David Simon is the most bitter man in the U.S. But, if you can get past his self-righteous disdain for the entire world, I think he actually makes good points. There are subtle, but important, points that a lot of people, including myself, missed. And he paints a depressing picture of the state of print media. Two of my friends that are just getting their start in journalism say it’s a pretty accurate picture. And that is downright depressing.

Her name is Rose. You can find her in the motion pictures Troy and Wicker Park. We are in love and we will be married and have kids one day. I hope that day comes very soon.