Ennui
I’ve been rather blue lately. I’m feeling creatively frustrated.
I have some idea in my head that I can’t quite get out – like that time when you had that really fantastic dream, and just as you woke up, you thought “I gotta remember this!” at the same time all the details start sliding away from you and you’re left with just that feeling that the dream gave you – a feeling of awesome, a Stendhal syndrome, that you’re trying to reconstruct…
Like I know there’s a picture there that just isn’t coming into focus, and every time I think I just start to get it, the dog barks, (if I’m at home) or someone comes into my cube (if I’m at work) and I lose track of that vision that I was trying to get to, that I almost just had in my hand if I’d just closed my fingers more quickly…
I find myself wishing for a work space at home that’s more like my workspace at work – a clean, organized desk with plenty of space and a big monitor to get my work done and away from the pets and the phone as distractions. Someplace I can focus. Entertainment Weekly has been doing a “Writers at Work” series, and Neil Gaiman’s is cool:
Gaiman escapes to his wooded Wisconsin hideaway with pup Cabel in tow to craft his fantastical works. Says the author, ”The setting is interesting enough that if I get stuck and need to stare out the window, there’s something to look at, which isn’t interesting enough to make me stop working and look at it for long.”
What a jerk with his “Wisconsin hideaway.” Where’s my hideaway?
I know, what a terrible problem to have, right? You play for me the world’s tiniest violin in response.
I think really just want to be more like this kid:
