Keeping Mushy Brain Disease At Bay

I made a commitment to write about 500 words a day, every day, indefinitely. This is because I am trapped in a cubicle for seven and half hours a day, doing a job that to this day makes me shake my head in disbelief and say to myself, “I can’t believe this is my job.” When describing what I do for a living, inevitably, ten minutes later, the person I was describing my job to says, “So what exactly do you do again?” It’s the kind of work that takes any creative tendency you may have and squashes it; smooshes it, right out of existence. Suffice it to say, my job involves ticket numbers, billing issues and ever-present feelings of futility; I imagine it’s a lot like what purgatory would be like. That’s all you need to know because even if I were to talk in more detail about the job, you’d just come back with that same question everybody always asks.

So this blog is part of my effort to, as Jesse says, “keep hope alive.” And the hope is that I manage to regain that creative sensibility I used to have say, ten years ago, before I had rent to pay, credit cards to juggle, a car note, an Overstock.com addiction. In college, I majored in English and I wasn’t one of those wafflers who changed majors every ten minutes. As a freshman, I knew English was it. What other major could you read great literature, then write about it? Then get a diploma for it?

I remember as a freshman, I used to struggle with writing the perfect sentence. I sat, with pen and paper in hand (this was before PCs and my boxy little Mac Classic), and sweated out sentences, word by word. As my college writing career progressed and the pressure of more papers to write bore down on me, the flow of words from my pen gained momentum and suddenly I was able to bang out papers pretty damn fast. Need ten pages on the Nun in The Canterbury Tales? No problem. Would you like to know my musings on the lethality of mother-love in Toni Morrison’s Beloved? Love to share with you! What about the author’s use of Taglish in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters? I just happen to have twenty pages on just that topic.

Self-expression seldom makes it on the priority list of most people. Yet, ignoring that need in ourselves is surefire way to end up on a rooftop somewhere, picking off innocent bystanders and people who seem, by your standards, too damn happy for their own good. Hopefully it never reaches that point with 99.99% of the people out there. Unfortunately, people who lack a creative outlet participate in the routine of their lives with a dull, empty-calorie kind of feeling; I imagine, perhaps, that they cannot pinpoint the source of their malaise, maybe going through their entire adulthood without a clue as to why they’re not truly happy.

I don’t think that starting this blog will alleviate that gnawing, dull feeling that often plagues grown-up kids that are masquerading as productive members of society (like me). But, it’s my little attempt to keep my mind from turning into mush in a socially acceptable way. And, look at that! It’s 3 pm and I only have two more hours to go before quitting time!