Updating my freaking blog

We can’t all be Trancejen. We can’t all be Circe.

Some bloggers find something to say every day. I’ll be goddamned if I can figure out how they do it, honestly; I’m stunned that I have anything to say here, ever (and in fact, maybe I don’t). And when I do think of something to say, and type it out, half the time I wind up with an annoying whine, or something just plain boring. I don’t always delete it, but I always think I should. I have several unpublished entries I keep thinking I’ll pull back out but I know I never will.

So Circe says – and I don’t think she’s talking to me but hell, she might be, “why doesn’t anyone ever update their freaking blog?”

I don’t know. I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t know why Ray doesn’t. I don’t know why Samsarra doesn’t. I don’t know why Adam and Gregg and Doxy don’t.

It’s not that I don’t want to. I stare at Ecto at least daily, confounded and mocked by the empty page (or in this case, screen). And the words do not come to me. I have stories I want to tell – about working the Utilikilts both last weekend at SF Pride, for example. About my kids. About work and life and mid-life crises of the variety some of my friends are having.

Let me pause briefly here to 1) sip my drink and 2) once again marvel at how silly this drink is. It’s called a chocolate cake, despite having no chocolate and no cake. You take one part Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur) and one or two parts vodka, shake over ice, and serve as a shot or in a martini glass. You serve with a lemon wedge dredged in sugar. You drink it reverse of a tequila, so lemon first and then the drink. And by some trick of taste-bud foolage and imagination, it somehow tastes like cake batter. I don’t go for the stupid sweet drinks as a rule, I’ll only drink mai-tais when I’m at a luau in hawaii, I like may margaritas very strong and not sweet and my rum and coke is mostly rum. Usually I drink scotch or martinis or tequila straight up. But these things, for some reason, are simply delightful. They’re also a great starter drink; get a few of these in your date and he/she is pretty much yours for the taking.

Ok, so what the hell was I talking about? I think I need another drink.

I don’t know what the deal is with the inspiration that comes and goes. I know that’s why some writers drink; I know that used to work for me. Now, though, not only do I lose the inspiration to write after more than a couple, but my rudimentary typing skills (those of you who’ve seen me in IM know what I mean) go from minimal to nonexistent. So I might have finnigan’s wake in my head, but what comes out is more suitable to crayons than keyboard.

Still I’m planning to test the theory. Couple more chocolate cake shooters (which will be more and more vodka and less and less frangelico as I go), we’ll see what I can manage.

Oh, I hate when the telephone rings in the middle of a thought. I answer it hoping it’s someone I really want to talk to. I put on my best “hey, baby, welcome to the party” voice, and it’s salesman, or wrong number, or calls for someone else. You’d think I’d learn to check caller ID, but hell what good does it do anyway when it just says ‘BLOCKED’ or “NOT AVAILABLE’.

Welcome to blogging for the short attention span. Is my drink empty again? How’d that happen?

The other thing with inspiration is, the times I feel like writing, I keep feeling like I should be working on something more serious. I tell myself I’m a writer. I have fiction in my head, and I’ve written things good enough for other people to confirm that I can do this a little. So I feel like I should, nights like this with the house to myself and nothing to do but drink and type, be writing fiction. I’ve got the ideas. I’ve got the stories in process, the characters. There’s a novel half-done in my head, there are a dozen pieces of erotica I know would be worth publishing could I only complete them. So they loom, tasks un-done.

But why don’t I just do this more often? Just sit down, stream of consciousness, and write? Well, see above. How rarely I’m alone, how rarely I have time to do nothing. Time is such a luxury now, so scarce a commodity. My last major piece of writing is now fifteen months behind me, and that was done one week when work was in a complete slowdown period, my boss was out of town, and I simply took the week, did nothing, and let a story consume me.

Oh, to be able to do it again. I don’t know where it came from then, either, it just came, at a time, a place, when it needed to. A time before orkut and other on-line forums, before work became a life-eating thing, a window where the muse seemed to know I was open to her touch and she reached out to take control of my hands.

The muse is fickle; I cannot summon her. That bitch. Maybe a virgin sacrifice?

Umgawah!!!

(That won’t make much sense unless you’re a Hoodoo Gurus fan)

So why don’t I update more often?

We can’t all be Trancejen. Which is why you should buy her book.

But at least I can be me, and maybe — if I don’t drink too many more chocolate cakes — I can start again and write a story before I get too sleepy to type.

Wish me luck.