looking for my mojo

Last week I panicked when I realized I couldn't write. I could barely come up with one paragraph to tell you all that I can't write... And I thought of taking a long break, get my thoughts together, maybe get some real inspiration brewing... but then I realized that I might never come back from that lengthy break, so I'd rather try all sorts of stuff to get my mojo back...

So the first thing I did, of course, is google "writer's block." It's funny how the first thing we do in any situation now is go to google. And here's how Wikipedia defines it: Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers. So it's a condition. And here I thought it was just one of those things writers used as an excuse when they had nothing to write about!


So now that I know I have a condition I feel the need to treat it. I found all sorts of articles on how to overcome writer's block... And there were some very strange ideas, like "talk to a monkey or a stuffed animal." No comment.  Another was "take a shower, change clothes." Seriously. Like that's something you should do only if you're really desperate to write. And my ultimate favorite: "Find God." I don't know about you, but if I find God, I won't give a shit about writing anymore.


Anyway apparently there's a serious lack of good tips when it comes to getting yourself out of writer's block. My suspicion is it's because anyone who's ever attempted to write these tips were trying to overcome writer's block themselves, and just ended up by listing a bunch of crap. 


I've been trying to write a long time, so I've tried my fair share of crap before. Do not go isolate yourself for three days in Faraya when the weather is gloomy and your hotel room barely fits a bed. Ordering crappy room service while watching fuzzy TV and feeling lonely will not get you inspired. You'll just end up leaving by the end of day 2, even if it's dark outside and the fog is thick and you're afraid for your life while you drive back down. You'll just be out of three hundred bucks. 


Oh and do not buy five different books from Amazon.com that all promise to help you write the world's next best-selling novel. They take too long to arrive, you pay three times their worth on shipping and handling (what is "handling" anyway?) and when they actually get here and you take all five of them on your isolation retreat in Faraya, you're probably only gonna read the first three pages of each and decide that no one can tell you how to write, it's an inner talent that everyone works with differently. 


Here's what I'm willing to try to see if I can get my mojo back: I'm going to come up with a list of 8 things to do in the next month [February]. And we'll see what happens for each... if nothing else, there will be pictures to prove my efforts.

1. Shock a complete stranger. I don't know how yet
2. Be blond for a day... and a night
3. Call in sick, and see where the day goes
4. Rats night out: convince the Rats to leave their belles at home one night and give me some oh so needed Rattitude
5. Go on a road-trip: somewhere I've never been
6. Give someone something for V day even though I hate it and it's corny and whatever
7. Read the letters my grandparents wrote each other before they were married
8. Look for God, obviously 

So... wish me luck.

save a life

Our lives are made up by a series of trivial little things.
We go to the bank and spent half an hour in a line waiting to cash a check or make a deposit. We run to the supermarket and we go down the list and go back and forth and in between the aisles and somehow always end up forgetting that one crucial thing. We to the gas station, and sometimes we sum up the energy to leave our car there to get itself washed. We go shopping. We buy presents for birthdays, for engagements, for weddings, for newborns. We go for lunch --because I came home starving and I couldn't believe there was Bazella, again. We spend money on things that make us happy, make us smile, make someone we love happy. We get our hair done, our nails painted, our eyebrows shaped. Then we go out for coffee. We read a book, browse the internet, watch a movie. I get upset because my sister wore my shoes, took the car, or is watching TV when I wanted to watch. We take a shower, sometimes a bath. I cringe when my dad asks me questions about my day. We go for dinner. We try to get a reservation at Skybar. We make a few phone calls, get the password, put some make-up on. We go for drinks. We wear high-heel shoes and start suffering within the hour, and why do we have to "suffer to be beautiful"? We flirt with a guy, we make-out with our boyfriend, we want to have sex but don't have a place to do it. We have a place to do it but we don't have condom. We have a condom but he doesn't want to wear it because you know how much it kills the pleasure.

They might be trivial things but they make-out our lives. Some people wake up in the morning and there are 30-thousand other people sleeping next to them. They have flies running up their nose and into their ears. They haven't taken a shower in weeks, because there isn't even water to drink. They have walked for 17 days with three kids on their back and a pregnant woman. They lost a child on the way, but they couldn't take his body with them because it slowed them down, so they buried their child in the desert and they were so dehydrated they couldn't shed a tear.They arrive at a refugee camp and there are 3-thousand other people who also just arrived and they wait, in turn for a ration of food, a drop of water. Everything trivial that they do is to survive.

So do something today. Save a life. It takes two minutes out of your time and don't you think that not getting your nails painted this week is worth saving a life?

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