I would like to open by apologizing to my legions of loyal followers for how long it has been since last I made a post on this blog. I have disappointed all of you, and it was never my intention to let down tens of millions of people. The last week and a half has been busy, stressful, and crummy (to put it mildly). Four out of five people in this household are sick, including myself, and there are a number of other factors that have delayed this.
Originally, I had begun writing a post that touched quite honestly on the bouts I have with depression (while it hasn't been clinically diagnosed, what else would I call it?) and what causes them. I have, in uncharacteristic fashion, backed down from that for a simple reason: it also deals with my current job.
I haven't followed the matter as much as I should, but as far as I know, there are no laws in place to protect our privacy from our employers. Likewise, there are no laws to protect us from our employers using information they obtain on blogs, websites, forums, or social media. The preceding statements may not be the truth, but I will not retract them. Nor will I do any research on them. Because I am going to move on to a random snippet that occurred to me for no real reason the other day.
Crazy circle people
Are hanging round my door
Don't what they want
But I don't want them here no more
In my head, it is spoken in the voice of an old-timey blues singer. Nice and gritty.
I keep a notebook nearby throughout my work day, and when little things like that come to me, I try to write them down. One of them (a little rhyme that sounded like it'd be spoken by sailors or fishermen) even turned into a short story. Taken in little doses, they may well sound like the nonsensical ramblings of a madman. I'm not inclined to disagree with that.
Inspiration comes, for me, in fleeting notions that blast across my mind and are gone if I don't act quickly enough. When it hits, and I act, I can produce an almost obscene amount of material. When it's out of town (which is almost all the time), I tend to lack to motivation to produce anything. I've already touched on my continuing struggles against myself, and all I do is manage to frustrate myself when I ignore that call to create.
Some ideas - and I hope they are the really good ones - simply linger, nagging at the edges of my conscious mind, requesting my attention in soft, polite tones. The longer I ignore them, the louder they become. Unfortunately, if I wait to long, they just leave. Probably figuring nobody's home, or that nobody will answer the door because they are avoiding debt collectors.
I have too often ignored these ideas, these stories-in-waiting, and it always bugs me for a long time afterward. There are several short stories that could turn out rather nicely, if I can just give them the time and attention they deserve. All of them blossomed from some small idea that might have seemed insignificant. Some of them from real-life influences. There's one idea that has burned in my brain for at least a year, probably more, that I feel could be either a novel or a graphic novel. And more recently, there's an idea for a novel or series of novels that has quite caught my attention and demanded brainstorming.
Without getting into the details (which should be obvious, considering how vague I was with my "examples" above), I would like to present this: inspiration is all around you. Perhaps that is a given, perhaps you already know it, but I wanted to say it anyway. Our everyday lives, no matter how mundane, are full of little kernels of information, stray thoughts, minor occurrences; all of these have the potential to become a great story (or song, or painting, and so on).
People - at least those in the United States - tend to get so caught up in everything they think they need to be doing that they often miss things that have been in front of them the whole time. It only takes a tiny bit of effort to break out of that and start seeing the world around you for what it could be: an endless source of joy and inspiration. Take a moment to enjoy the smell of fresh-cut grass, or the way the clouds roll across the sky, or how the sunlight kisses the mountains in the morning. You don't have anything to lose.
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