My "Out" Week: Day 1

Hello, boys and girls and variations thereupon. Contrary to what some believed and many feared, I have not actually died. Thank you, to those of you who left comments wondering where I'd been and when I'd be back, assuring me of your loyal readership.

I love you all.

The question of "where I've been" has a very tedious and mundane answer. Life. That insidious motherhugger that grasps all of us by the throat from time to time and shakes us until our eyes roll back in our heads. If I wrote a book on why I haven't written a book (or a blog or a short story or a forum post) in months, that book would be called Get Back, Foul Beast: One Woman's Struggle with Life Itself. And these would be the chapters:

The Boyfriend

The Family

The Gaping Maw of Unrepayable Debt

My Own Laziness

Lack of Inspiration

That last one is the subject of my blog today, and for the next week: I have nothing to say.

I used to have things to say. I used to have nothing BUT things to say. Things just spilled out of me like I was an over-shaken soda bottle with the lid not quite screwed on (and people did sometimes make similar comments about my lid). Reading back through old files of my work, I used to be pretty darn prolific. Granted, it was a metric crapton of pure junk that I was producing... but as with any amount of junk, there were a few gems in there. And I was having fun, back then. Back then, writing was the best thing ever.

So what changed?

I've had a lot of theories about what changed, over the years. I got older, I moved houses, I stopped having so much free time, I stopped reading as much. But yesterday, Sunday, I thought about one of the big changes:

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch TV or movies.

We didn't have a TV, and our dial-up internet couldn't have streamed video even if there had been content to stream. Back then, Netflix was just a service that sent you DVDs in the mail. We used it for our once-a-week movie night. The idea of only watching movies one night a week is laughable to me now. I often binge-watch 5 seasons of a show in a week. I cram programming down my mind like episodes are Pringle chips and my mind is a lazy, hungry belly.

Which it is.

This is a crucial realization for me. Much like my stomach and body, my brain is lazy. It wants to do the least amount of work possible.

But it's also hungry. It always has been. And when its needs aren't being met, just like my lazy butt, the desire to fill up with what its missing becomes greater than the desire to stay on the couch. (The metaphorical brain-couch, you understand.)

I had been thinking that my lack of motivation was an inspiration problem. I started reading more, watching more, listening more, going out and actively hunting down more input. But it hasn't been working. At all. So I've been thinking it's not an input problem. It's an output problem.

The same way it sometimes takes getting a little lonely to reach out to a friend, or having your leg go numb before you get up off the couch and go for a walk, maybe my brain needs to suffer a little before it will take action.

My mind craves stories. It always has. Maybe if I just let it dwell in that craving, and don't satisfy it, it will kick back into gear telling stories to itself.

So for one week, I won't be watching anything. 

I also won't be reading any fiction, although I reserve the right to read non-fiction and Calvin and Hobbes. Instead, I'll be focusing on putting things out: journaling, blogging, and (hopefully) writing. I will also be keeping you, dear reader, updated on my progress. Just in case this is the golden key to unlocking creativity, I want to share it with all of you. Because I'm generous like that.

(My updates will be a day behind-- for instance, this update is really about Sunday, even though it's Monday; Tuesday's update will be about today, and so on.)

On day 1, I didn't really notice any change. I got an idea but quickly got tired of it, since it was A. too depressing and B. too similar to The Giver. But I definitely felt... something. And hey, I'm blogging, so that's different.