I can't sleep.  Or I just don't want to.  Or something.  It has just passed midnight and I am wondering what my deal is since last week I was going to bed around the 9 o'clock hour after a weekend of camping and rising and lying down with the sun.  I guess I cannot fight it: I am a night owl.  Even if I get up early I am almost never fully awake before 11 AM (ask anyone who has ever worked or lived with me). 

I have just spent the better part of an hour looking for employment opportunities on craigslist because I feel like a fraud calling myself a writer and I feel like I should start preparing for the day I eventually run out of money.  There are a lot of shady gigs out there.  I especially like the ones that ask you to send a head (and/ or body) shot with your inquiry because you need to be attractive and well proportioned in order to serve food and beverage.  Um, I don't think so.

I would be a professional friend if I could.  I would love to spend entire work weeks just being a friend to people.  And by professional I don't mean I want to be paid or to solicit my services, I mean I would want to be taken seriously doing it.  That's all I really want out of professionalism.  To be taken seriously.  I think that's probably half the allure of it for most people.  Sure, we all need money to live in this world, but I think most people want to feel good about themselves and to be proud of something while they earn it.  It feels good to be an expert. 

I once met someone who was an incredibly kind person, the kind of person you want to be around and who you feel lucky to call a friend, and he talked about "letting them be the expert."  This dude was so cool because when he interacted with people he didn't act like he knew how cool he was or like he had all the answers.  This dude would stand and have a conversation with you and learn something from you because he knew you were probably an expert at something.  And you would be flattered and dignified because you were the cool person in the conversation; the one with the answers.  You could be an expert at taekwondo or medicine or wastewater management, it didn't matter.  You had something cool and interesting to talk about.  Basically all this dude would do was shut up and listen and learn, and the next thing you knew you felt like you were in the presence of Gandhi or something.  I always wanted to be more humble and kind like that.  I would want to be the kind of professional friend that makes people feel like they are rock stars. 

The real reason I am up is because I cannot turn off my brain.  This happens a lot to people, I understand, but I feel like my personal thought process is like that ringing in my ears: it never really goes away, it only seems that way sometimes because I've stopped paying attention to it. 

Okay, okay.  The real reason I am still up is because I had a mug of ice cream at 10 PM.  That was a delicious mistake.  And this shitty first draft is its love child. 
 
first draft 11/11/2009
 
I started reading this book about writing last week and already it has been enormously helpful in validating me as a writer because apparently the psychosis of having a brain that operates like a tangled web is a common trait of writers.  I wish my counselor had told me that when on my first visit I said something along the lines of, "I'm not entirely sure why I'm here.  I've got some stuff to unpack.  My brain feels like a tangled web with pieces of debris stuck in it."  Instead she told me to write about the web. 

I saw this movie a few years back called "The Waitress," with Keri Russell and it was a decent movie but I don't really want to talk about the movie, I want to talk about how Keri Russell's character would have fantasies about making pies.  The Screen would flash instantly from real life to pie crusts filled and topped with all sorts of crazy combinations of fruit and sweets and it was apparently Keri Russell's character's way of coping with life to make pies.  And she was awesome at making pies.  People loved her pies.  Anyway, I feel like I do that sometimes in life except instead of pies it is words.  Words or sandwiches.  I happen to make a mean sandwich.  Most of the time it is words, though.  I will space out in a situation in order to compose sentences and essays about what is going on in front of me.  Sometimes all I need is to drive by some funny sign that plays on words and I can think of a hell of a lot to say about it and how it reminds me of something that ends up making for a pretty good story.  My problem is that a lot of times I can not write things down as fluidly as they race through my mind so I end up spending a whole lot of time staring blankly at a computer screen, feeling like I want to take a nap.  Writing can be really hard.

Apparently this is normal for writers. 

Another thing this book talks about is writing shitty first drafts.  I'm not trying to be daft, that is the name of one of the chapters.  "Shitty first drafts."  Anyway, I have read a lot about needing to write first (and second and third and so on) drafts but maybe it was they way this author talked about it because for what might be the first time in my life it seems like a good thing to do.  Maybe it's because I feel like I finally have permission to write shitty stuff.  Before I would spend a lot of that staring-in-front-of-the-computer time editing in my head like when I was in the seventh grade and I would get points taken off in math because I liked to do the work in my head instead of writing it all out.  I don't know what it is.  Maybe I have a problem with getting messy with the process or maybe I like to protect the work in progress like a secret.  I really cannot say.  What I am trying to say is that I know I said before that I would try to keep this blog tidy but I have changed my mind.  Now I am going to let it get messy and I will publish some shitty stuff.  A few people have read my blog for years and think I am a pretty good writer but they might start to change their minds before I post something really good again.  But I think this will help.  I will write more often and I will free myself in such a way that might let a few buried treasures of really good writing surface every now and then.