Writing Behind The Wheel… NOT!

They say that art imitates life. Well, for me, life seems to get into the way of my art. I often wonder… if I didn’t have a day job… if I didn’t have to spend 11 hours a day occupied by things that I “must” do … how soon would everything come bursting to the surface? I know it would be quick; so quick it might overwhelm me, but how sweet that would be.

Today was one of those days when I woke up feeling pretty damn good, and as the day progressed, my half-way decently happy mood was forced right down the shitter. Can I pinpoint specific things that happened to turn me into a negative, depressed, total downer? Yeah, I can… but you’d find it all quite trivial and boring and I’d have to give you all kinds of background information about each incident… and who wants to wade through all that? Certainly not I, after all, I already lived it once, I honestly don’t have the intestinal fortitude to rehash it all and attempt to make it witty and entertaining while I’m sitting here feeling like total shit. Suffice to say that events of the day all conspired to make me feel like God hates me, my life sucks, and I have nothing to look forward to except more of the kind of crap I experienced today.

Once, a few months back, I had decided that it would be a good idea to get Dragon software (despite my hatred of the idea of speaking instead of actually writing; I believe it will kill the art form eventually, but I digress…) so that when I was driving I could get my thoughts down. It seems like when I’m driving (I commute an hour each way back and forth to work) my mind seems to percolate with prose and when I finally get home every thought and brilliant idea I had is either gone from my noggin all together, or I just don’t have the same passion for the topic as I did in the heat of my road rage induced passion. A friend of mine was kind enough to get me the software for my birthday. Naturally, I have been unable to set it up and try it out thus far because my everyday life has simply not provided me with the opportunity to do it yet. So, tonight, yet again as I drove home trapped in a traffic jam of biblical proportions that turned my usual 60 minute ride into a 140 minute ride, my mind was filled with thoughts that I wanted so badly to be able to get into a Word document that I wanted to scream.

Now, here I sit, keyboard in front of me, opportunity to write it all down wide open, and do you think I can muster the passion and eloquence my mind was bursting like a volcano with just a mere hour ago? OF COURSE NOT!!! What does this have to do with my shitty day today? Ugh… see?! That’s just it. In a state of total depression and upset my mind seems to be a writer’s paradise… I get filled with the kind of angst and longing and soulfulness that I can only cure by writing; words pour out of me. Yet when the moment passes I can still recall what I wanted to say but the passionate desire to write it is gone and I find myself going “Eh…” and not doing it.

Tonight, in the deep dark shadows of what was a terrible experience well over a year ago, and the miserable, rotten events of the past 24 hours, a poem was bubbling to my surface. It was intense and raw and had I been in possession of a fountain pen I might have been compelled to write it in my own blood just to make real the idea of my heart bleeding out … but I had no fountain pen… I had no ballpoint pen… hell… I had no Dragon software. So where did that poem go? Where did the 10 paragraph blog post about liars, cheats, and selfish, toxic, disappointing people up and vanish to? I’ll tell you, my friends… those items and more… they never escaped me. They lie in waiting someplace deep inside me. They will return… it’s happened before.

No, that poem isn’t entirely hidden. I see it peeking at me from around the corner. I am not certain if I wish to play hide and go seek with it tonight. So much of me is reeling from the days drama and disappointments. Do I poke the emotional bear and bring it all to life by writing it all down… or do I force it to hide and declare in Scarlett O’Hara fashion “I can’t think about that right now. I’ll think about that tomorrow… after all… tomorrow is another day!” Hmmmm…. Let’s see what the night has in store.