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The Curse
of the Wandering Attention Span
My
brain is so foggy right now. The type of fog that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
used to place Sherlock Holmes in. Thick, dense, but lacking clues. I have
an article deadline in two hours and haven't a clue as to what to write
about. So I sit, and so I twiddle my thumbs, and so I stare and oddly
enough it doesn't write itself. Writer's block would be the fancy schmancy
term used by the fancy schmancy writers who get a paycheck. I call it
Shiny-things-distract-me.
I'd
love to write a full page about Baby Huey, this overstuffed couch I'm
training right now who is dumber than a bag of hammers. The thing is, my
sons are watching The Wild Thornberrys and it's distracting me. Every time
I start to type about how Baby Huey needs to be led to each table, or how
she needs to have things physically placed in her hand like Helen Keller so
she can understand (w...a...t...e...r), the television catches me by the
ears and I start to ponder as to why every talking animal has a British
accent. Walrus seals in Alaska and the main character's pet monkey to be
exact. I could just tell my brain that they're imported from the UK, but my
brain will have none of that ol' bullshit. Baby Huey would be a great
story, too. I mean, she's about a zillion feet tall and outweighs the
Denver Broncos. Plus she has the smallest brain. So small, in fact, that
she may believe that all animals, if given the ability to talk, would talk
like South Londoners. That is, if she could hear them as her miniscule
brain rolls about in her head like a pinball machine. Betcha all my tips it
makes her eyes light up when the brain smacks against her ears.
I also
had an idea to write about how I had to work Mother's Day. Yep, my fifth
unpaid holiday in a row. BUT, wouldn't you know it, my General Manager
ruined a great ranting by giving all of us mothers flowers before we opened
the doors that day. So instead of filling a page full of hateful tears and
grinding teeth complaints, I have nothing. Mother's Day was busy, yet
smooth. It was tiring, yet profitable. Yawn. Nothing to see here, folks;
keep moving.
Did
you know that with writer's block comes chain smoking? Oh, and I can give
my lighter a spin and make it rotate about seven times before it comes to
rest...and almost each time it will end facing me. Amazing fact, that. I
wonder if there's a competition for such a thing someplace.
Okay,
back to concentrating about Baby Huey. Focus on Baby Huey. I need to see
her large frame and think of something witty and stop banging my head
against the desk. Speaking of desks, when did I dust off my scanner last?
It's so dusty it looks as though it's one of those travel games where you
drag a magnetic pencil over the metal shavings incased in plastic and makes
the drawn gent on the board look as if he has a beard and moustache. Great…
thirty minutes til deadline and I'm scrutinising over gadget housekeeping
and $.99 time wasters.
Time
is tick tick ticking and I'm wrapping my hair around a fingertip til it
turns purple. The finger, not the hair. The Wild Thornberrys is over so
that was just a pitiful excuse although I'm known to blame others for my own
lack of enthusiasm. Especially when shirking responsibility. For instance,
I needed to spend my day off cleaning the basement, but decided my walls and
woodworking needed a scrub down because the kids had crayoned them. Now, my
basement is huge and is dirty enough to be a crack house. My walls were
clean except about two inches of grey crayon mark near the sofa. Solution:
blame the kids for marking the wall thus making it impossible to clean it
AND the task at hand (the basement). Masterful!
Alright, it's time to turn this puppy in. It's going as is and I'll just
make up an excuse as to why it lacks direction and has no basic theme. I'll
simply tell the editor that Baby Huey ate my first draft and I didn't have a
back up copy. Something along the lines that I use a manual typewriter blah
blah blah, and ran out of white-out yadda yadda.
Stay
tuned next week for another exciting episode of… of…
Oh,
fuggit! |
