Your lights are on, but you’re not home
Your mind is not your own
—Robert Palmer, “Addicted to Love”
Whenever I’m in a long non-writing funk I think, “Where did all the mojo go? How will I ever get back to it again?” I could’ve been writing the day before but it feels like a hundred years ago. And then it comes back, and you wonder how you ever lost it in the first place even though I know I will, eventually, and be equally clueless.
I described it in therapy once like a faulty lamp switch. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’ll only work if you jiggle it. Sometimes it works if you push the switch 2/3 of the way in. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Then one day, boom, works like normal. For about a week. Then it’s the same dance.
WRITING
I successfully jiggled the switch this week! Mostly the equivalent of sketches in a sketchbook, but I accumulated a good bit of material.
- This week’s writing chain: 5 days
- Total writing days this week: 6 days
READING
I find myself in an interesting reading pattern. You can see from the past few entries that I flip back and forth between a couple of Filipinx-related, a couple of Rust Belt related things, with some nonfiction in between. I followed up the first five TRESE books with MANILA NOIR–which even has a TRESE story in it. Talk about a book that exceeded my expectations! Even the “meh” stories were pretty good.
I’ll be following it up with COLUMBUS NOIR after I finish THE CREATIVITY CURE by Drs. Carrie and Alton Barron. I try to stay away from self-help books that sound too woo-woo–I live in Ithaca, NY, so you know I know what I’m talking about–but I’m hanging with it so far. I was led to this book by Belt Publishing’s latest offering, OUR ENDLESS AND PROPER WORK: STARTING (AND STICKING TO) YOUR WRITING PRACTICE by Ron Hogan, which I think is definitely worth checking out.
IDIOT BOXING
I binged watched two Netflix series in two days. TRESE absolutely met my expectations. Animation could’ve been a little better but it was on part from what I’ve seen of other Netflix original anime. But the adaptation of the source material was awesome, and I’m all about seeing (well, hearing) Lou Diamond Philips’ Filipino side. I’m biased, but I really want this show to succeed. I mean, where else am I going to see a walis tambo used as a weapon?
I wanted to like FRESH, FRIED & CRISPY, I really did. But dude had to go and disrespect the Spam fries from a Las Vegas Filipino joint. I mean, c’mon man.
IN THE WILD
Nature is healing, therefore…
