Caution: Contagious

I don't think I'm going to actually do it, but it did occur to me that my blog could use a new name. Something like, "Erratic Digressions of the Boring Kind" or "Occasional Depressed Digressions." (That last one has the bonus of acronyming down to the simple but appropriate "ODD," but it's a little too far away from the established pattern to be tolerable in the anti-change corner I do so adore inhabiting.)

The other thing I've been wondering in my blogging absence—well, ONE thing, as there are many things that I wonder, not the least of which is WTF is WRONG with Corporate's many bathrooms, because I seriously do not believe my trials there will cease until or unless they decide to become the third company to lay me off, not that I'm obsessing about that or anything, although, yes, I AM—is why "catching up" sounds so much like a noxious disease, at least in my head, and/or when applied to blogging.

As you can kind of tell from the title of this here blather, I've concluded it is simply the obvious, literal root of the beast that has struck me so—not unlike, perhaps, the SCARY-ASS TREES that totally stole the battle scene in Prince Caspian, which I just saw on opening day with The ListMaker, because HELLO? when ELSE would two long-time fans of The Chronicles of Narnia see the next movie in the series EXCEPT on opening day?—and not anything deeper or more profound than that.

Which doesn't make for much of an interesting blog entry, perhaps, but excuse me, since when is this blog about entertaining the masses? Right. Pretty much never.

Anyway, it's not that nothing's been happening here in wyo's world—quite the contrary, in fact. Alas, it appears that nothing more enthralling than an average, ordinary mid-blog crisis has kept me from blogging, and it's only moderately less boring that my mid-blog crisis has extended fat tendrils of tenatitivity into my other writing endeavors as well. (It's not even "just" my novel that's been affected ... the limited writing that I do by day at Corporate has been liberally coated in the contagions, too, like a peanut-butter sandwich assembled by a three year-old, using his fingers as the spreading implement.)

However, I haven't been petrified by fear of failing, or flummoxed by inability of interesting. No, not this or any other mixed-metaphor of blended alliteration has stymied my ability to get the heck out of bed and pound the keyboards on a semi-regular basis—I just haven't done it. I've been obsessed with my apathy and I've been SO into not-caring that I haven't even questioned why I don't care ... because I just don't care!

(I'm not even embarrassed to admit this, which is almost embarrassing in and of itself.)

How DO you—the "general" you, unless a particular "you" has some significant or perhaps amusing personal insight to offer, in which case, please feel free—convince yourself to care about something that you do not care about? You may well be able to give a fair performance of caring, but I'm not sure it's possible to invent an honest interest in something. Even if an interest has previously run rampant—like a raging fever that burns up all other considerations in its own egomania and self-centeredness—it's a difficult proposition, at best, to reconjure it up where it has vanished.

I have to think there's some magic involved behind the scenes when it comes to interest and drive: some unquantifiable, precious, LIVING magic. You can wish for it all you want, but it rarely responds to your wishes, preferring to arrive unannounced and unexpected.

And that is, perhaps, exactly why you can't stop preparing to receive it, even when it deserts you, even if such desertion comes at a very painful time ... a time when you might say you need it the most, and you are left alone, bereft, and echoingly empty. Creativity of any sort is a great boon at such a time; it doesn't ease the pain but at least it keeps it company, while apathy only serves to invite greater pain, with longer echoes.

(Just so you know, I kind of thought this entry would be funnier than it's turning out to be. Because I really did fully intend to discuss how "catching up" is a bit of disease, firing up like a rash on one person and spreading to the next, and the next, and then the next thing you know, ALL the kids are wanting to jump off the same cliff, although because the vector is electronic, it's only a virtual cliff.)

I do feel better now, though. And I will agree—however grudgingly—that it's better to write without motivation than not to write at all. But I will not even begin to suggest that it's better to read something that was written that way.