Where is My Mind?

I have been avoiding the blog for a while, not because I want to, but because my mind has been a huge blank this summer. Seriously, I think I might have brain damage. Backtracking, I’m not exactly sure when everything started to go wrong for me. But it’s safe to say that when I was laid-off from my job in June, the evaporation of any kind of formal structure system mixed with the very non-intellectual pursuit of trying to find work, has caused a huge swath of nothingness to open up in my life. Let me clarify that I am normally not one for exhibiting vast amounts of spontaneity, at least not consistently. Consequently, the ridiculous amount of fee time on my hands these past two months has been the bane of my intellect. Late nights have been spent watching B (and sometimes C) science-fiction flicks on cable and endless hours have disappeared into the black hole Internet realm of discussion forums, Facebook and other multimedia sites. Meanwhile, the job search always keeps chugging along unsuccessfully. The only thing tempering this ennui is a stack of books beside my bed, which I have been reluctantly trudging my way through like a fat Indiana Jones trying to pull himself out of quicksand. Thank God for my weekly unemployment benefits or I would be dining at the local dumpster behind my apartment instead of throwing boxes of pizza crust into it.

But more than just being lazy, or unfocused, or mired in a slump (as I like to describe my situation to my psychiatrist), I think I’ve also been hit with an invariable bout of Writer’s Block. I say invariable because these things are bound to happen sooner or later to  most aspiring writers. If the daunting challenge looming over our heads us doesn’t get us down, the realization that maybe we just don’t have what it takes to be a professional writer is sure to hinder our creative motivation. Like a lot of people who have been in my shoes, I am having a problem with the F word. I am finally experiencing what it feels like to cower before that dreaded and towering conception of Failure, a notion that prevents many a person from progressing in life and threatens countless dreamers not to dream big dreams. But – fuck! - more than this, I have been plagued by a syntactical problem which has messed with my ability to construct meaningful thoughts using sophisticated words and sentences. This latter condition is no doubt the result of subjecting my brain to excessive amounts of lowbrow entertainment and drivel during my down time (which I have a lot of). If I’m not ogling free online porn, I’m chatting with White Supremacists in the virtual equivalent of a prison cafeteria. It’s safe to say that I’ve developed some bad habits of late, and rather than try my hand at the writing to steer me back onto the right path, I’ve let the fear of producing something embarrassingly awful keep me away from the keyboard.

David Foster Wallace said that, “Anything that is a failure is always a victory.” Coming from a guy who’s battle with depression ended when he took his own life, these words mean a lot. Speaking at a panel in Italy in 2006 two years before his death, the author of Infinite Jest said, “In some ways what I try to do with myself is just avoid the success and failure thing, because there is so much about writing that is out of the writer’s control – not the action of doing it, but whether is comes alive or not – that if I begin to think in terms of failure, what happens is I get really depressed and the game is over, because I’ve already decided.”

In some ways what I’ve been waiting for is the automatic motivation, that ticket to ride the train of words that flows through the eternal ether. I have lost my Muse so to speak, and the ability to channel my thoughts and feelings into coherent sentences and paragraphs. To be linguistically deprived feels castrating in a way, because I consider my writing talent to be one of my biggest assets. If my ability to express myself and communicate effectively becomes limited, I feel doomed. After all, I don’t have washboard abs and a chisled face to fall back on, or better yet a bloated trust fund. What seems like even more of an affront is that I have all the time in the world to hone my language skills by reading, listening to NPR, or associating with other people who I consider to be smarter than myself. Instead, I watch videos of cats humping on You Tube, I chat with other unemployed people across the globe about meaningless minutiae (like the size and consistency of our bowel movements), and I find the desire to watch straight-to-DVD movies like Hell Raptor III at 1 am too tempting to pass up.

I swear, it feels like some stranger has usurped my brain and body and is using it for his own sick pleasure. Whatever the reason for my recent childish behavior, I don’t think I can go on living this life for very long before something changes. I hope that by taking David Foster Wallace’s words to heart I can overcome the initial urge to play it safe and avoid failure when it comes to writing. And hopefully the fact that I’ve just written about my Writer’s Block means that I’ve already taken the first step in confronting this obstacle.