Thoughts While Sitting On My Couch On A Saturday Afternoon

So, I'm sitting here on my couch, pen in hand, yellow notepad on my knee, blues playing in the background on the TV--the air is chilled and my mind seems blank. Actually, that's not true--there are words and images flowing through like a strong current, but they're muddled and blurry and I'm not sure which one I should grab and put down on paper. Writing, like a lot of things in life, doesn't come without at least a little bit of effort. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I am, more than anything else I could possibly be, a writer. It would probably help tremendously if I adhered to that old adage--that a writer writes. Probably just as much if I remembered what a TV producer added to that statement at a screenwriting conference I attended some years ago--"assholes talk about it." I think I'd prefer to be the former rather than the latter, though I'm sure at one time or another, by at least a few people, I've been considered to be the latter. Not that I care to know. Probably safe to say that any one of us, at some point in our lives, has been an asshole.

But...I digress, though from what I have no idea. Right now, I guess I'm just stream-of consciousness-ing it, which can be fun and sometimes produces some really good stuff. I know it's been difficult of late to sit down and write much of anything, because my focus has been on trying to find a job, which is also frustrating, not to mention soul-draining. I'm of the mind that there's nothing more taxing on the soul than to be able-bodied and willing to work and not being able to find work, regardless of how much effort has been put into securing a job. Talk about the blues!

I find myself living vicariously through the writers I read and the works they've produced, whether in the newspaper, magazines, books, and/or the Internet. Although, I continue to aim for the reverse to be true. It would be gratifying to know that there are people out there who are living vicariously through my work or, at the very least, are being inspired and entertained by it. But again, this leads us back to the earlier point that writers write and, though I've produced some work of note, I hope, I could and should be producing more. But then again, the impetus of such an action should be, first and foremost, to my satisfaction and fulfillment of the desire to express myself, before I consider anyone else's benefit from it. As noble as the concept of producing art for the masses is, the artist has to be able to find contentment in the expression and the fruits of that expression before it is subjected to an audience.

So, as I sit on my couch, pen in hand, yellow notepad on my knee, blues playing in the background on the TV, surrounded by the chilled air, my mind starts to fill, along with the words and images swirling to and fro like a strong current, with the notion of me--the writer, the artist--in his daily struggle to create art, to express himself, to live, vicariously, through his own work. 'Nuff said.