Mr. Potato Block

So what do you write about when you can’t write? When you’ve been looking at a computer screen for the past 9 hours with nothing to show for it? When everything you thought to be worth writing is now rendered worthless as it is read by no one?

I’m not sure.

I have this problem every once in a while. Some people call it writers block. I’m not really sure why it’s called that. There isn’t an actual block that they pass around like hot potato to see who gets stuck with it… “Oh, Sorry Ralph (Waldo Emerson), you can’t write for about a week. It looks like the entire literary world will have to suffer through seven more days of unenlightened prose until your block is taken by someone else.’ Watch out F. Scott... you're next.

Now, I’m not claiming Ralph Waldo status… doing so might get me thrown out of many writers ‘Circles’ (If you get that joke, I tip my hat to you.)… But for some reason, the usual fluidity, the non ceasing thought process that continually flows more and more and more… so much that you’re actually laughing to yourself at the pure genius of it all, as you can hardly type fast enough to get it all down… that sweet enjoyment of putting thought after thought on paper and connecting them one at a time by daring and outlandish means… yeah… that thing… is gone.

Why? Because I’ve been thinking about what really matters to people. To me. To you. To someone reading these words right… about… NOW. …

I think I’ve learned that I can’t write about anything of importance. I’ve tried. Hard. And because most of the things that have been going on lately are important to me… I am unable to find non essential things to write about.

As much as I’d like to be able to write about what really matters, to really open up and show what’s inside… I can’t. Not even if I’m the only one to ever read what’s written.

But the ironic thing is, as I look back at the other things I’ve written, I can find a small piece of me inside the words… a vulnerable, unaltered, tell-all piece of me. And maybe I wasn’t trying to hide it, or maybe I was… either way it’s there, and I found it. Can you?