Not A Mused

Not all emotions are inspiring. 

That’s said with a certain amount of subjectivity. For many, they coast through a plot riding whatever wave of feeling they are experiencing. They season their stews with all the feels. Good for them, I say… and make a mental note not to partake of some of their stews. I’m on a diet.

But I can’t do that… utilizing every experience to craft another twist. For me, it’s too personal to be applied to some random piece of fictitious flesh. The shit I put up with from day to day, the stress, the obligations, heaped on top of emotional disappointments and heartaches… hell, I don’t write tragedies. Is there even still a market for hopeless melancholy in a Prozac-and-Botoxed-Smiles world? It’s not about getting paid at this point. 

It’s about being heard. 

Besides, is that what I want you to hear? A metaphor about the debaucle that is my life? A bad joke with a dead-pan punchline? Too many tears in not enough beer? Why the fuck am I asking you? 

I don’t want pity. I don’t want any trite sorries or consolations. Life is a shitbag wearing a three piece Armani suit. And I’m not assuming it’s any worse for me than it is for anyone else. So why dress my stories with the bad seasonings of my day to day?

Which means, when things go bad, I shut up shop. 

It’s a self preservation mechanism. It’s all I can do to function mechanically, sometimes. Don’t expect creativity on top of that. I cannot cope with my stresses that way. I don’t take pills, I don’t see a therapist. I keep my inner postal at bay by closing in. I applaud writers that can funnel and channel and kumbayah their setbacks into some stellar gem of literature. I wish I could do the same.

I need to be writing. I need to push it all out of my head, duck down, and get it done. I need to remind myself that every setback is merely another slight hill that I will climb. Pretty soon, I won’t even feel winded. I’ll barely notice the inclines. I’ll barely notice anything at all. Pretty soon, yes.

But damn, how I wish I was already there.