Stress

Overcoming Writer’s Block: Because It Happens To Everyone

Jay Leonard Schwartz Uncategorized, Writing , , , , ,
What a blockhead!

The truly great writer does not want to write.

He wants the world to be a place
in which he can live the life of the imagination.
– Henry Miller
One of my resolutions for next year is to write a bit more about writing, especially in terms of developing one’s creative spirit. Getting ideas and nurturing them into written form is always our main objective as writers. However, there are times when those usual soul lifting notions seem to flop about, inspiring nothing but stress, depression and lowered levels of self-esteem.
For a writer, there’s nothing worse than not getting ideas … except for maybe not getting paid! For a blogger, it’s pretty much the same thing. Face it: writer’s block happens to the best of us. Therefore, in the spirit of this season I thought I would share with you some of my own ideas stemming from my experience as a writer of various forms of ‘this, that and whatnot’.

Weird Scenes Inside The Gym

Jay Leonard Schwartz Intrasomatic Conspiracy , ,

A while back I posted that I had started going to the gym to address some of my, for lack of a better term, health issues. Psychologically speaking, I decided to go for the very reason that I don’t want to go. You can read more about that decision HERE. But for this post, suffice it to say that sometimes in life you just have to psyche yourself into doing even the most beneficial of things.

OK, so at least 3 days a week I wake up, have a cup of coffee and a healthful breakfast of sliced fruits, nuts and feta cheese. I don my gym clothes and saunter across the street to the gym. No, I don’t drink raw eggs ala’ Rocky, but I do raise my hands in victory after jaywalking my way through traffic. Sure, there’s a crosswalk about 20 feet way, but, you know like, that would be too easy. Besides, statistically more accidents happen at intersections than in the middle of the road.

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I think, therefore I am distracted.

Jay Leonard Schwartz Uncategorized , , , , ,
Photo source

More than occasionally, I get distracted by things I take more than a passing interest in. I’m working and then somehow “tele-pathetically”, my attention and thoughts have been teleported to some obscure webpage which I micromanage my way through. It just takes one stray thought to hijack my stream of consciousness. It could be about something trivial I read in the news that morning, or something profound I thought about the day before, or even something ethereal I dreamed about … or daydreamed about. Whatever it is, I pursue this new found interest with behemoth vehemence, almost as if I’m championing some cause.

It could be, I think, a coping mechanism of some sorts that I inherited genetically from my father. You see, he was a real estate appraiser, and a reformed mathematician. Half the day he spent driving around different neighborhoods looking at “comparables” (houses that had previously sold) and trying hard not to look like he was casing said neighborhoods for a future home invasion scheme. The other half of the day he would write up his appraisal reports: monotonous long and short forms to be completed with data and figures that mortgage lenders would eventually rip borrowers off with. When completing such forms, my father needed distraction to break up the stress of monotony. If at home or at the office, he’d listen to talk or sports radio. Usually though, he liked to sit at busy places so he could  look up at the all the hustle and bustle and watch people and the world go by. Really! You’d find him sitting at a mall, at the airport, in a hotel lobby, etc. Had Starbucks been around when he was working he most likely would have been a fixture. He had an active mind… so he needed distraction. I’m pretty much the same way … (pensive pregnant pause entered here) … though most likely due to the raging modicum of my mom in me as well, I fear that a small part of my willingness and penchant to be distracted might also betray a much needed break from reality.

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