February 25, 2004

are we there yet?

What's wrong with me lately? Clues? Anyone? It's like I can't accomplish anything unless I'm completely wrapped up in, excited by, pushed to the extreme by, or enamored with something. I used to be able to take a task--any task, name one--and pride myself on how well, how fast, how good I could get it done. All the better that most of the important tasks involving $$ had to do with writing, which was something I was pretty good at, and after so many years at it, something that just kind of happened every day. Never a "writer's block." Never a deadline missed. Jeneane the Machine. Garbage in, Diamonds out.

Not right now. I'm having a weird time. Just weird. I'm missing my buzz. I used to get a buzz out of it from the challenges I'd give to myself. Like, let me give them this little bit extra; they'll love it. Or, Let's see if I can get it back to them this afternoon instead of tomorrow--blow their minds. And so I would. And so they would. And I'd get my merry little buzz, smile, good job, and hop onto the next assignment. Seeing the finished product, weeks later, would always be rewarding as long as I didn't look too closely at what I'd actually written. That always gave me the creeps because I never knew what it would say. I'm a purger. Once I write it, I dump it from my hard head drive.

Anyway, there's nothing here for you. I'm writing this for me I guess. I almost always approach the blogger window empty handed. In this process of reading, writing, and rewriting myself, I figure out what I'm going to say. Usually someplace in the middle.

Every poem I've written here has been written on the spot. Usually in three minutes or less. When I wrote the poem about my dad the other day, I didn't come here to post about that. I came here to talk about my day and my wanderings in and out of social networks.

I stopped and said, "stop going out, go in. go in" and I watched a car go by out of the corner of my eye, from the spot under the piano where I can see through the living room window. I thought about what I had seen. I thought about what I remembered. And it came to me--what didn't I remember?

That's how I write here. I had no idea what this post would say. No idea. But somehow they write themselves and I'm sitting back there in the last seat on the train, and it is only somewhere along the trip that I realize what I'm feeling and where I'm going.

Or not going.

scattered. lost. wondering. wandering.