Tag Archives: writer’s block

Non-fiction

Unique Observations

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I saw a black t-shirt this morning with a message in old English font that said, Assholes Live Forever. Where did she buy that shirt? And is it true? The assholes do live long if you were to ask me.

I sit in torment over tomorrow. Work will start again, and I still haven’t heard from the doctor about my hand. I have to keep calling him until he sets an appointment. My job is making me work on commission. They pay me only fifty-five percent of my salary once a month, and then the total of my salary plus the commission is on the next payslip. It’s not enough to get by.

My right leg still itches with some sort of sore on my calf. I hope it isn’t from a bed bug. The last thing I need is another infestation. I’ve been through that hell enough times already and now isn’t the right time. The right time is never.

But anyway, I’m facing a wall right now and can see the rest of the shop through the glass reflection of a picture frame. My head is full of residue. I don’t feel motivated and haven’t felt motivated for quite some weeks. I’ll have to practice patience until the motivation sparks. I vegetated all of yesterday, but today I’ll get exercise. I was using the elliptical machine the other day along with the stair stepper for almost an hour. I burned a lot of calories, and I counted them with my watch. It’s the only way to know if I’ve made any progress. I don’t feel like going to the gym after I’ve just joined, but maybe my motivation will change.

There’s a woman wearing a cowboy hat high on top of her head, with most of her blonde hair showing on top. And then she left with her man.

It’s cold in here. I wish they would turn down the AC. They always turn this place into a freezer. I’m the only one here. There are people sitting outside on the patio, but I don’t want to be near those folks. I’m doing just fine where I am.

Someone posted on my blog yesterday that I should subscribe to theirs. I didn’t, and I didn’t understand why they would post such a comment. It was something I didn’t approve of either. I’m not subscribing to someone’s blog just because of what they told me to do. As it were, they didn’t subscribe to mine, so I didn’t see the point.

I’m lost for words. It wasn’t this difficult a month ago. Now writer’s block has put me in handcuffs. I belong to a Facebook group about writers helping other writers. It’s mostly bitter people bashing other bitter people about their writing. But once in a while, someone will post that they’re a new writer who’s facing writer’s block. They can’t think of any new ideas, so they’re seeking advice from someone who might know the answers. The answer is that it’s everyone’s plight. No one is immune to this illness. We get trapped in it because of life’s difficulties. And that’s my answer: that everyone has to deal with the same shit no matter how experienced they are. It’s about continuing writing, even if it’s bullshit. In some ways, that’s the beauty if that’s the way you’re looking. But so many of us stop where we are and wait for our thoughts to come rather than keep our hands moving with time. And then the thoughts emerge as best as they can. I often stop where I am but that’s not good. Anyway, what’s the use? This will go down as another wasted post in a long line of others. I sit and wonder why I’m doing this.

Non-fiction

Juxtaposed in Daylight

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Everywhere I go, I see them texting. Anger follows. People pissed off at everything, and it shows, and they aren’t to blame.

Yesterday, I paid my speeding ticket online. Over four hundred dollars that included a fee for an online school. I don’t know when traffic school will start. I’m supposed to call a number for school. It will be on the internet, and it will have comedy, that which won’t be funny. But that’s okay.

I can feel my hand again, but the doctor hasn’t called to make an appointment. I’m beginning to think he won’t because of the possibility of worker’s comp. He would rather not deal with the headache. I’ve experienced enough to know, like my therapist who won’t accept my insurance, and so I pay her full price. It sucks to lose, but at least I’ve taken the day off from work. That’s a victory, like yesterday, which was a day off too. My stress isn’t as high as usual. Go figure. I can walk around with less of a bother. Although today it will be hot. It’s hot already, and it’s not even eight in the morning. I’m waiting for the weather to cool down, which won’t be for another month.

My next work deposit better be significantly higher than the previous, or I won’t know what I will do. And what will I do if I come back and see all of the work piled up because no one has taken off the load? I would be extremely upset, but I’m not free of doubt.

The month is almost over. One more week before September, and I’ll be glad because it has been a hell of a month.

I wallow in boredom because in boredom I’m consumed. I’ve heard that boredom is for boring people, so that’s how it is. I waste away my time and hear that time is meant to be wasted. Evidence shows little in regard to nothing. What should I do? I’ll call the doctor and see what’s the problem. Do I have to search for another? What other can I find?

I stare into space and look for words. I’ve run out of ideas, stuck in a cloud.

I took an assessment last night for a new job, and I believe I failed because the exam was multiple choice, and the answers were too similar. They had to do with sales of water. I didn’t know sales would be that in-depth. I just thought I would test water, but it appears that water has to be sold. They just call it water tester to attract more applicants. I can’t see myself selling water, but it has to be a better job than the one I have now. They might actually train me rather than hand me a bunch of documents to read and expect me to know the material right away. I was untrained and set up for failure. That’s important to know. I’ll just sit in this chair and watch it unfold.

Non-fiction

124 Degrees

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The Coachella valley reached a record high this week of 124 degrees. I sweated all over when I went for a walk, and it stung my eyes. I couldn’t see where I was going along the sidewalk on my way back home. Supposedly the heat will last for weeks. July is meant to be that way. How will I make it to September when it will cool down? At least that’s what I expect. My parents said it’s usually the case.

Another Sunday has me feeling bored. I don’t know what to do with time. Perhaps I’ll wash my clothes. It doesn’t matter what I do. I still must see the dentist in the afternoon tomorrow, but at least I’ll miss work, the last place I want to be. My boss joked about me preferring to get my teeth pulled over having to go back to work. I didn’t laugh with him. I took his words seriously. So yes, I would rather have a root canal than go to work any day this week, or any week it seems because my job is torture. Angry people on the phone are constantly complaining, cursing, too, as if the problem must be me, not them.

I miss vacation time. I won’t go on another one until September since I like to break it up into every three months to keep my sanity. Imagine if I didn’t take those days off. I would be a wreck come Thanksgiving. Who am I fooling? I’m already a wreck. Work has kicked and slapped me. It’s hard to focus on anything else. I carry work with me after my shift when I take my walks. Does that make me a workaholic? I guess so.

Anyway, the summer is too long these days. It used to be short when I was a kid who played in the backyard. Now I don’t even have a backyard, just a pool that I share with all the other tenants.

I’m at the coffee shop, and a guy keeps turning around and looking back at me from his table. He’s watching horseracing on his iPad. I know because I peeked at it. He’s getting on my nerves. Thank God he just left.

A lot of tourists have entered today. It’s 10:30 a.m. The busy crowd has left the store. Now it’s just us regulars and a family of tourists at a long table.

I stare out the window and see the different shops across the street: Sinfulicious Body Care, Balboa Candy, Crazy Shirts. I’ve been inside the candy store before but never bought anything.

It has been quiet in downtown Palm Springs because of the heat. No one wants to go outside except for me. I can handle the heat.

I’m going through a crisis with this writer’s block. We all go through it as writers. No one is immune to it. We run out of important things to say. Otherwise we’re just repeating stories or ideas. Richard Hugo said to write about our obsessions. I’m obsessed over several things. He also said to focus on the subject that isn’t the subject. For instance, if I was writing about knives, the real subject wouldn’t be the knives but something else. I don’t know what that something else is. I guess it comes to me naturally after I’ve been writing for a while. I don’t know a single writer right now.

I knew a few screenwriters when I lived in Hollywood. Some of them were moderately successful. One of them moved to Texas a long long time ago. I wonder whatever happened to Michael. He was a sweet man. I also met screenwriters who never wrote. They called themselves screenwriters I guess to adapt. Michael was working with several producers at the time I knew him. I was in my late twenties or early thirties. I can’t quite remember. He always sat outside of the coffee shop and stared off into space when he wasn’t waving at people. He would tip his fedora at the ladies. His mouth was crooked. Something awful had happened to him, but I never asked him what or why. We would smoke cigarettes together in the coffee shop patio back when that was allowed. Now I don’t think people can even sit and hang out at that coffee shop anymore. I never thought it would come to that, but it’s here. I hope Michael is doing okay for himself in Texas. He belongs in a better place. Anyway, I’m wishing for the best this Sunday, but I don’t have high hopes, and I’m wishing for the best this week. I hope it doesn’t kick my ass too much.

Non-fiction

Writer’s Block

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Somewhere, someone is laughing because I can’t think of a word to write outside of the fact that I’m writing about not knowing what to write. Does that make any sense? I thought not. But let’s go.

Writer’s block is real. Some people claim it isn’t. It’s fine if they can give it another name. How about constipation? Does that make it sound better? I didn’t come up with writer’s block, so I’m fine with whatever someone calls it. It’s real. I think the muse is real, too. Some writers deny it. They say hard work and determination are what produce words and paragraphs and pages and chapters and whole works. I say that’s part of it. A writer has to sit his ass in the chair and stay there until the work is done for sure, but there are outside influences that can determine the writer’s success.

I’m staring out the window, watching a barista take a break from work. It isn’t distracting in the least, but he intrigues me enough to stop and watch him. He’s sitting on a park bench on the sidewalk in front of a Sunglass Hut, reading from his smartphone and vaping next to a star of Harry Lee Coffman, M.D., on the Walk of Fame in Palm Springs. He’s drinking iced tea out of a plastic cup. He has walked back in. Now I go back to writing. My Adderall can only help so much.

When I was younger, I used to run into a man at the coffee shop whom I was convinced was the devil. He was short, skinny, had a bald head, and wore all black with black sunglasses in which I couldn’t see his eyes. His appearance didn’t make him the devil, although his pale complexion and skinhead jacket did make him look sinister. It was his behavior. I tried to get work done there, but he would walk up to my table and start talking. I forget whether I wore headphones in those days. I was only in my twenties when dude entered the frame of my life.

“There he is,” he would say.

When I looked up, I saw him approaching me with a grin, and I thought, “Oh shit. Here we go. He’ll waste my time for about twenty minutes. There goes my muse.”

What fascinates me is how no one bothers someone who’s reading, and nine times out of ten, no one will bother someone who’s writing. Except this guy. Yep, the muse is real, and it’s delicate. He would elucidate to me random facts such as the difference between yellow mucus and clear mucus, as mucus was forming on his lips. And I would just stare at the mucus in morbid fascination.

He was a cokehead who would bump lines in the bathroom. I never had clear evidence, except he would come out sniffling after a long time while other people waited for their turns.

He also claimed that he was the ex-drummer for a famous 1980s hair band. I recognized the hair band but couldn’t think of one of their songs. For some reason, I believed him.

Anyway, he was the devil to my muse. My muse would crumble and die when he was near. He sent telepathic messages to me that I was doing something unimportant or at least not as important as what he wanted to say to me.

I never found out whatever happened to him. He’s probably at some other coffee shop in the universe, chatting it up with someone by himself who’s trying to focus on something, telling him about his days as the ex-drummer and how much coke he did. The man was a vampire. He was writer’s block personified. I never found out his name, but who needs a name to identify him when he served only one purpose, which was to kill someone else’s muse?