dwink i owned a company and all i got was this stupid blog

The Cure for Writer’s Block is Wholesale Brain Dumping

I like to write, but I never seem to get up the gumption to post writings to this blog. I don't know why; part of it is that usually when I sit down to write a post I suddenly feel my brain empty itself of meaningful thought and I write about 10 words at a time only to promptly delete them. Which, when you're on an iPhone that doesn't let you select text and delete in chunks ( c'mon Apple, we know you know we want it, don't make us beg ) means I can get through about 500 words of deleted text on your average train ride and still end up with exactly zero on this blog.

And yet those 500 words of deleted text represent the seeds of 50 ideas; 50 things which may have been brilliant had I given them some water... (what? okay, enough with the garden metaphor)...had I had some whisky and lost my inhibitions and just blurted them out.

So today, I'm blurting. Brain-dumping. Allowing whatever comes out to come out. I'm going to talk about, uh, whatever it is that my brain wants to.

Like my daughter, who is going in for an MRI tomorrow, and that they're going to sedate her because they don't want her to move. And they're going to put an IV in to give her the sedatives. And how the last thing I really want to see right now is my two-week-old baby with a fucking IV in. How much does that suck? I mean, she's two weeks old. She's not going to understand why there's suddenly this stabbing pain when they put it in...she's not going to get it when they say "there'll be a little pinch" (which I've always thought was funny, they should say "this is going to hurt like hell" so that it's not as bad as you're expecting it to be), she's just going to feel the prick and start crying and it'll break my heart. 'Cause it's bad enough to have to deal with that as an adult.

And at work, where sometimes I wonder how on earth I got to be so important to the day-to-day running of the place. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not great and all, but somehow when I started out I managed to figure out what needed to be done and do it without very many people giving me walkthroughs and step-by-step instructions. And don't get me wrong, I'm all about writing up things and documenting how things work -- but if there's no document, then there's source code. And when a program fails it gives some sort of sign; perhaps an obscure one but still. If I'm truly the only one who can figure this stuff out then I need to hold out for more money.

I wish I were more organized. I've gotten some good habits going which help me to pick up where I left off, and I'm really good about things that come to me electronically -- but I find I have a terrible time with taking useful notes during live conversations that translate into things I should do when I get back to my desk. I need to practice this, or the efforts I've taken to start using GTD methodologies will be ineffective.

I'm being distracted by the sound of the TV. I find it almost impossible to ignore the scattered sounds of television -- the sound bites, the commercials, the reality show banter. Even Wubbzy, which I've now seen too many times to track, has a magical hold on my consciousness. I suspect this is why I became a huge fan of putting on headphones when I work -- it allows me to focus only on my limited area rather than allowing the distractions of things outside my immediate field to filter in. Unfortunately, at home I need to be listening for the kids, and at work there's been a headphone ban put in place as it's not considered professional. So now train-time is my only escape time.

And train time isn't really an escape, as much as I'd like it to be. It's just not *quite* comfortable.

Before I go, I have to note that after I put the 7-year-old to bed tonight, I came back down and kept hearing thumping from upstairs. I ignored it for a while, until it still hadn't stopped after 20 minutes. So I meandered upstairs to see what on earth was going on. I walked into his room and there he was, wearing a pair of headphones -- NOT plugged into anything -- and bouncing on the edge of his bed. This, after already being up past bedtime for an extra-long bath.

I mean, seriously. The headphone cord was dangling at his ankles. I asked what he was doing, and he just shrugged and looked at me like I was an idiot for asking. Like it was obvious, 'duh', I'm listening to NOTHING, Dad, and jumping up and down shaking the floor, in time with the beat of the NOTHING. Waking up my sleep-challenged brother to the funky beats of DJ NOTHING. I mean, who *doesn't* do that, fool?

I think this age might just do me in.