I can't write. Again. I don't know why this happens, but it drives me crazy. Often enough, I am already packing sufficient crazy without having writers block, which essentially robs me of the most therapeutic outlet I have in life.
Three months ago, when something happened to me, the story started forming in my head almost immediately and by the time I got to somewhere I could type it out, it would just sort of... spill from me like too many shots of tequila. And similarly, I'd feel a million times better afterward.
Now, when I try to think out how I would tell a story... I get a feeling more similar to the one I get when I think about how I need to do the dishes. And it isn't for lack of material either. I meet new people and have weird experiences left and right since I've been in Austin.
I spent some time down at my dad's parent's farm over Christmas. Land that's been in my family since the late 1800's, in a small town where my ancestors settled right before Texas became a state in the U.S. One of them built their house out of the remains of the local Baptist church after the Indians came through and burnt half the settlement to the ground. My dad's dad is 86 years old with a fake hip and doesn't look or act a day older than he did when last I'd seen him 15 years ago. Instead, within a few months of getting the new hip, he was replacing the roof on the barn in the old pasture. It is an insane experience to be around him, and to hear him tell stories about the Korean War and about being a kid in the 1930's, in that slow Texas gentlemans drawl that is unlike any other accent I've encountered. There are so many things I want to write down about their lives while he is still so clear and lucid and strong. I just can't seem to do it.
Or what about Joe Rogan and that whole... difficult-to-categorize evening. The man was my idol, my teacher. I got to meet him. But more than that, I got to hang out with him and his entourage until 2:00am when the bars shut down, at their private after-party. I hung out with Brian Redban, Duncan Trussell, Alex Jones and Aubrey Marcus. I met some of my other favorite guests from his podcast, I had some of the weirdest conversations I've had in years, I made friends with a porn star and only found out late into the evening that that was her umm... profession. It was both everything I'd hoped for and also destroyed the pedestal I held Joe on, all at once. I have SO much to say about that experience. Only... I can't find the words.
I am an even more rabid MMA fan than I was when I met Greg Jackson and the very high profile students at his gym last fall. I watch some form of fight stuff every day. I haven't missed a UFC in... almost a full year. There is almost no way to know them all, but I am trying. I want to know where they came from, what drives them to punish themselves for the sport, which ones are freaks of nature, which ones could have been chess prodigies but chose combat instead. I want to chime in on the never ending argument between people who claim that fighting is barbaric and all it's fans are bloodlust craving animals and those of us... that know better. I could write about this stuff forever. For a living, if someone would pay me. Or at least, maybe I could have before I fell into this creativity-devoid ditch.
I stare stupidly at my keyboard, and wait for the right adjective to characterize a place or a person or a situation to just come rolling out of my fingertips like it used to... and nothing happens. I try to recall the passion I felt about an experience while it was happening, and I feel bored. It could be because Josh is gone... but I wrote like a fiend when he was in Kentucky for 3 months last winter. It could be that I'm not as tuned into the cyber world as I once was because I'm focusing on staying busy and making friends here, but that's never stopped me before. What I'm really afraid of, what I fear every time this happens to me, is that I only had that firey drive to voice my opinions when I was young enough to think they'd make a difference in the world. Or in other words, that I'm getting old. And complacent.
My last resort, my last hope, is something that really helped me tune into the muse this time last year. I need to find some weed. There was a time that I wanted nothing more to do with my evenings than to take one tiny puff of a joint, turn on a lecture or a podcast with an actual smart person, and spend the next 4 hours taking notes and opening browser windows for every little bit of information into which I wanted to dig further. Somehow, right in that window between stoned and sober, with only a tiny stream of THC chasing it's way through my neural pathways, all the cogs and gears in my brain started to move in synchronicity.
It makes me a little nervous to admit that on the internet, being as how it's open and available to potential bosses, family members, etc. But it's true, and I made a promise to write the truth in this blog, as I see it. So there it is. It helps those of us with creative juices to tap into that unseen layer of the atmosphere where art and ideas are born. And hopefully it helps a cranky and frustrated almost 30 year old broad to find the way back to her stories. Because... let's face it, I wrote this because you have to write to get better at writing, and practice will only help, but it sucks.
I'm going to hit the 'publish' button anyway.
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