I remember watching Fahrenheit 451 and wanting to write a very Bradbury-esque story (even though I haven't actually read his books) about a white hat hacker group that got people all kinds of falsified documents and resources so they were able to function is a dystopian society where people were divided by classes and the better life you had the higher up in the buildings you lived. Maybe everything would be very metal and cyberpunk because I had also recently watched both Blade Runner movies and a little of Altered Carbon in between. I say recently, but these events were a year apart. And throughout these events, I haven't written a single solid thing.
I also remember coming home from work one day, exiting the bus at this stop that was right in front of a firefighter building. It had a sign on the fence informing that the area was for employees only. A scene rushed into my head of a girl asking her friend to drive her to a military facility, no questions asked, and when they got there she shoved an ID in the security guard's face. The security guard apologized and acted like she was some (very) big shot. The friend would ask, "When were you going to tell me you're in the military?" She would answer, "I wasn't going to. And I'm not in the military." "But you do have clearance," the friend would say, with a specific tone in his voice. "That's all there is to it. I have military clearance. End of story," she would hiss.
"More like the beginning of a story," the friend would comment, closing up the dialogue.
You see, it brought me such joy coming up with this short dialogue from seeing that sign on the fence. I can easily remember other instances, like walking home from that same bus stop, smelling peppers in the air from a Middle Eastern restaurant nearby, and an idea rushing into my head. It always felt like it simply came to me. And for a while now my ideas seem to be fabricated from other pieces of media I have consumed. Not that they weren't like that before, and we could go on a whole other conversation about what is truly original nowadays and what is just a copy of a copy of a copy. Yes, I've also finally seen Fight Club in these recent years I haven't been writing. But I digress. The issue at hand is that I miss writing like I used to, and I'm not sure how to get it back. And it's not the first time this has happened, really. Maybe I just think too much.
"She does indeed think too much," the narrator in the sky says.
It seems to me that I've been caught up dealing with "real life" things and that has stopped the creative juices from flowing (I hate this saying so much, goodness me). But then, does that mean writing is not a "real life" thing for me? Has it always been such a sideshow attraction? The last time this sort of block has happened I came to this same pattern of thought, this pressure to create something... something else, almost. And then it feels like life gets in the way because writing becomes something I have to work for, and I'm already working for all the other things. Sometimes when I tell people I write, they're like, "oh, really? what about?". And then I'm like, "um, anything." Because it's lighthearted while still being a wholehearted thing, you see. It's supposed to be easy. This post right here was easy to write. Isn't it good? I feel good about it. Well, there you have it.
Here's to trying again, I guess?
