Idle Hands

Lately, writing has taken a backseat to another of my strengths (and not a good backseat, like my proverbial driver, he’s been quite silent of late). The strength I refer to is the result of a life of complacency and/or malaise; slacking. Now, I’m not a slacker in the conventional sense, the Costanza sense. I’m a hard worker when moved. Give me a shovel and I’ll dig a tunnel to the moon if you want me to. My inner sloth however, bears its claws when it comes time to use my mind. Let’s say, for instance, that I have a blog, which I use to hone my writing skills, in hopes of one day penning a children’s book or some such thing. Let’s imagine I have loyal fans, all of whom wake up salivating each morning, thirsty for a healthy word shake in blog format. And let’s make pretend, just this once, that I try to always have something new there to nourish them. I spend most of my days trying to think of something sweet to write that night, so my fans can begin the following day with a nice warm word lump in their brain bellies. But that’s when my mind so often plays possum, or sloth, or whatever. Anyway, I’ve been a very lazy boy lately, in a literary sense.

I’d like to say I’m going to turn that back around again post haste, but let’s face it, I’d like to say a lot of things. “Professor Fingerbottom,” but that’s just fun to say. I have had a few ideas for blogs lately, like the one where I compare my life to that of Jesus (by the way, can anybody think of any reason that I may be a martyr?), but nothing stuck with me, other than this pesky Tinea. Maybe I’m out of ideas. Is the mine played out? Are there no gems left to dazzle my readers? I’ve done zombies, done birds, done gymnastics…what’s left? My mind is a blank canvas and I feel as though I’m out of brushes, or paint, or whatever. How can this be?

There is actually one reason I can think of for my lack of limn of late. I’ve pretty much become a Guitar Hero hero. I’m a Rock God on the small plastic button guitar. I can play Paranoid flawlessly behind my back, behind my head, pretty much behind any part of my body. I used my Linus to play Welcome to the Jungle, and even lit the guitar on fire to play Knights of Cydonia, but liquid plastic dripped onto my sack and I had to smother the fire with the soil from a house plant and dip my danglies in yoghurt for about two hours (hey Catfish, what would that be called?) I also suffered a rotator cuff injury trying to “drop the needle” mid-Mississippi Queen. It was an ugly incident. I’m just not as spry as I once was. I don’t have the cute, nimble fingers of a Kevin Shen, but I do pull shapes and make guitar faces like Mick Jagger (if Mick Jagger played Guitar Hero…or guitar) while I shred through Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames, on medium difficulty. Perhaps I am spending a little too much time on this.

I guess I can justify all of it by saying that in spending my time playing Guitar Hero instead of doing something productive, I have, in effect, been physically training to be a writer by nimbling up my fingers for prolonged writing sessions, and virtuosic word sprints. Now I’ll be able to shred through a stream of consciousness odyssey with nary a worry about writer’s cramp. I’ve basically trained my way from amateur writer to Olympic writer, in that I’m still amateur, but that much more fit. And now that I’m back to “lean writing machine,” I can concentrate on the mental aspect, and try to shake that sloth off my back, or monkey, or whatever. First up: some quality hammock time with my newest writer’s reference, The Writer’s Journey – Mythic Structure for Writers. Stay tuned.