Philosophical Ramblings from 01/08/2006

When I was a kid, I could pretend that I lived on a distant planet, worked in a foreign country, was the owner of the world’s most fancy hotel.  Anything was possible; a bush could be a fort, a yard game of catch was the Super Bowl.  Ideas, situations, and plots flowed out of my mind, almost as if the real world did not exist.  I wrote or drew books and stories of adventures with imaginary talking animals, and comic strips as original as original can be.

I wish I could remember the point in my life where the imaginary ceased and reality began.  I would go back and tell that boy, “Do not lose it!”  I remember telling myself and others while growing up that I would never lose my imagination, that I would not grow dull and uncreative like I saw some adults to be.  Boring jobs and teaching were not for me.  However, despite my strongest efforts, here I am.  I am an eight to five engineer for a high profile company, going to work every day, and I have writer’s block. 

Not just writers block, but composers block, and artists block as well.  All of the things that sustained me growing up, fed by my imagination, seem to have abandoned me for the drab gray of reality.  And I despair. 

Not that I am unhappy.  Far from it!  Life is still an entertaining, enjoyable situation I find myself in.  Unfortunately, it is also dissatisfying.  I do not wish to go to work every day.  I still dream of being rich and famous, having created something, or some things, that have touched the lives of people I have never met. 

The only writing I seem capable of is vaguely philosophical ramblings that lean toward the theme of sarcastic observations of what I have learned thus far.  Hardly the adventure stories of my youth.  I read those stories sometimes and wonder if somebody else wrote them.

How did this happen?  Was it when I left my safe home to go to college?  Was it when I began spending more time browsing the internet or chatting with friends through a computer keyboard, rather than finding something active to do?  Was it when I changed majors to something logical and mundane in the interest of having a surely secure future?  I do not regret any of my decisions thus far, because I do not see how things could be different!

Questioning the past is pointless.  The past can not be changed, save by a biased media who will report anything in favor of a more interesting story (as was the case of the 2005-6 National Champion game when the Univ. of Southern Cal was being touted as the greatest football team of all time, one in search of a three-peat championship, despite LSU’s winning of the 2003-4 championship game).  So I suppose one can say that one can not change one’s past.  Regret is useless, as long as the lesson is learned.

So what to do now?  Can imagination be regained?  If so, then how?  Despite my efforts to be a fiction writer, more often than not I find myself staring at a blank paper or screen, completely devoid of ideas.  Simply writing whatever comes into my mind usually reads as pointless or shallow, and going to work every day without attempting to embrace my creative urges feels like surrender.  Gah!