soopastryheart

Every so often, an idea will pop into my head at the most inopportune time/place, when my computer is not within reach. Back in the day, I always had a notebook and pen in my bag, but in the last couple of years, I’ve ceased carrying one (a bag). So now, whenever the occasion arises, I am forced to type the idea down in my phone. These “ideas” usually disobey any and all rules of grammar, and are so laden with typos (at this point, spell check just gives me the finger) that when I return to the note at a later time, I have no idea what the fuck I was trying to say.

Other times, I’m in the shower, half-ass lathering my head when an idea that I’m convinced is the best I’ve ever had pops up. When this happens, I will repeat it out loud, over and over, like people do when they’re trying to remember a phone number or the code to a locked bathroom. I will rinse an acceptable amount to stumble out of the shower (many toes are stubbed this way), wrap myself in a towel, and sprint to my laptop, where I start typing away, all while I’m dripping water onto the keyboard. I do this in such a frantic way, that it usually alarms my boyfriend, who always asks if everything is okay. But of course, I’m so concerned with getting every detail out before it’s lost in a mental abyss, that I ignore him completely. When I’m finished, I’ll look up at him staring at me with a look that says, “Yo man, you’ve got to chill the fuck out.”

Unfortunately, this is a scenario that happens far too often than it really should. Every once in awhile, I’ll have to jump back in the shower after discovering a clump of unlathered shampoo behind my ears.  If there’s a more graceful way to handle these epiphanies, I’d love to hear them, if only for the sake of rinsing out shampoo completely, as opposed to like, 60 or 40 percent.

Anyway, the point of revealing the fact that I’m a completely inefficient hair-washer is to pose a larger question (and a few other smaller ones): if my brain is full of these super great ideas that force me into a hysterical panic to get them on print, then why is it that when it comes time to expand on those “brilliant ideas,” my mind draws a complete and utter blank? Is my writing career limited to Twitter-esque ramblings and nothing more? If I string around these spurts of incomplete thoughts, will I eventually have a book on my hands? And how long will that take? 20 years? 50 years? Should I be doing some brain exercises that helps improve memory? Is it my memory that’s the problem here or my crippling insecurities when it comes to my writing? And is there an app that could decipher incoherent memos on my phone? Why doesn’t that exist yet? Should I be carrying around a Talkboy? And why do these fuckers from 1992 cost forty dollars?

It’d be pretty awesome if my brain stopped clamming up when it came down to brass tacks, and start functioning the way I know it’s capable of. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s a small little troll in my brain somewhere that likes to mess with me, tease me with the prospect of writing, and then sabotages the actual process later down the line. Or maybe that troll is me, and I need to stop making up these so-called issues and dilemmas (and excuses) and just write.

Whatever, I don’t know, I can’t remember what I thought about this.

*Title lyric from "The Sweetest Thing" by Camera Obscura