False Starts

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February 2nd, 2013

This bleary winter has definitely taken its toll on my creativity. Looking at the dustiness around this blog, I can’t help but feel disappointed in myself for not sprucing up a bit or at least setting out some new potpourri to make it smell a little nicer. I’ve tried; trust me, I’ve tried. I have […]

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This bleary winter has definitely taken its toll on my creativity. Looking at the dustiness around this blog, I can’t help but feel disappointed in myself for not sprucing up a bit or at least setting out some new potpourri to make it smell a little nicer.

I’ve tried; trust me, I’ve tried. I have three failed essay attempts sitting on my desktop laughing at me, taunting my psyche with childish “naah, naah, nyaah, naahs” or however that chant is supposed to be spelled.

The first and greatest failed attempt is a long diatribe against the fake Manti Te’o relationship. It wasn’t the pretend love affair that made me upset as much as that she fake-died from leukemia. I knew it was a terrible disease, felling so many people I’ve known over the years. But if it can even kill fictitious people …

And that’s about where that blog ended. I wanted to rant about the exciting, new, real cures for the disease that are coming out. I wanted to say if she were an actual person, maybe she’d have had a shot at being saved. I wanted to be mad at people who wantonly threw around leukemia, without knowing what a sucky sickness it is. But I just couldn’t muster up enough outrage.

Then I jumped to how much I hated January. One day it was almost 60 degrees and the next, what, minus 90 or something. I had a dirty, stinkin’ rotten cold that lasted most of the month. A wonderful colleague passed on, and I had to slog through our annual ritual of filling out the college financial aid or FAFSA forms.

My rage against January knew no bounds. Well, actually it knew about four paragraphs. Four short paragraphs. Then it was spent.

I was sure I was onto something, finally, when I met with a wonderful couple looking to book me to shoot their wedding in May. I was talking all about my decades in the photography business when I realized they had no idea I was a writer too. Here I was, about to release two new phenomenal New York Times bestsellers, and this cool couple had no idea about the sheer, raw talent sitting across from them in the food court at Somerset Mall. (The fact that I had to look up the difference between sheer and shear, should in no way diminish my credibility).

That blog lasted about a paragraph, maybe.

So I sit here with no ending, and if I’m honest, no real beginning either. It’s not writer’s block as much as it’s writer’s blah. But today is Groundhog Day, which everyone knows means six more weeks of Bill Murray. I’m hoping that by Springtime, I’ll have seen a shadow of something interesting to say. Until then, it’s more HGTV and The Food Network to occupy my thoughts.

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