Time To Get Over Myself

I think I have writer's block.

I feel pretentious even THINKING that, since my "writing" consists of using Powerpoint and Capture Express to paste pictures of my head on other people's bodies, or making up idiotic captions for pictures I take with my cellphone in order to illustrate the random neuroses that plague me on a daily basis.

So recently, when I had someone ask what my writing process was, it made me snort. It sounds WAY too fancypants for a hack blogger such as myself to attribute something that's driven by stupidity, emotional retardation and/or blood alcohol levels to an official "technique."

But when I thought more about it, I realized that "process" is practically my maiden name. I mean, HELLO, I work for a gigantic Fortune 100 company. I can't pick my nose during a regular workday without getting advance approval from fifteen different executive committees. I EAT your BUREAUCRACY for BREAKFAST. And crap it out in a the form of a crisply written interoffice memo.

So in the corporate spirit of "Just Because It's Unimportant Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Deserve A Two-Hour Meeting And A Fifty Page Presentation," I have summarized my process for the enjoyment of anyone that has not yet passed out from utter boredom:

Step 1. I do something stupid like teach the Spawn a rhyme about farting, which reinforces YET AGAIN how incompetent I am in the parenting department.

AND/OR:

Step 2. I'm wearing a light-colored, dry-clean only outfit and running late for work when I either smear blood all over myself, or one of the Spawn spontaneously barfs.

FOLLOWED BY:

Step 3. For several hours, I stew over the event in question. I also occasionally witness something while I'm doing worky type stuff that causes me to space out and scribble things like "Google Kum & Go to see if this really a gas station, or just a discount porn shop" in the margins of highly sensitive financial documents.

AND FINALLY:

Step 4. When Spawn are down for the count at night, I spend the next few hours ignoring my husband to hunch over a keyboard and rant about whatever middle-class problem has so heinously wronged me on that particular day.

This process has worked for me so far because I am a high-strung, compulsive, A+ person in a Type A world. Unfortunately, I am also starting to realize that another reason that it works for me is because I am an ungrateful bitch who finds irritation in things that just aren't really that big of a deal.

So when I am faced with a REAL issue, my usual smash-and-crab approach doesn't work too well.

And therein lies the blockage. I just found out that someone that I love got themselves in a really shitty situation, with no easy solutions. They are destined to feel the fallout for YEARS to come, and it just seems ungrateful to piss and moan about things like The Boy wearing the same t-shirt for five days in a row when people I care about are in so much pain, and there's nothing that I can do except bombard them with phone calls and emails.

I feel like I have somehow lucked into an undeservedly good life. I have Manager Dad, who has proven able to survive Hurricane Me; The Boy and The Girl, who love me as if they don't know any better, and my parents, each who have each come through catastrophic health events without winding up much crazier than they were to begin with.

I'm no Buddhist, but I am feeling like I need to take a moment to lay off the bitching and show some gratitude, or the universe is REALLY going to deliver me a five-alarm smackdown.

So, thanks, universe. And thanks to you for listening.