Phil M Writes

So, right now, I am listening to Jackson Browne sing “Running on Empty” and I gotta say… I hear ya, Mr. Browne.  

We all have troubles, and I know that there are plenty in this world who have it worse than I do, who would gladly change places with me any day of the week. I really have nothing to complain about.

Most of us don’t, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get tired sometimes, you know?  It’s all about keeping perspective and I think Jackson Browne knows that and is telling me about that in his song.

This week, an important writing contest I had entered regretted to inform me that I would not be advancing to the second round.  At about the same time, some nefarious types hacked my website and brought it crashing down.  Hours stretched into days as both I and customer service at my provider tried to get back things on track, to no avail.

So, a couple of frustrating setbacks, yeah.  During which time, I got no new writing done and I count that as the biggest setback of all.  I had intended to start September out with a bang, with word counts met every day.  For reasons both noble and savage, I have put down precious little of anything, so count that as another setback, the hits keep coming.  

All this conspired to make me feel that what I did get written, and the work in progress I was writing was nothing but a steaming pile and should never see the light of day, a mental setback.

September has been great so far.

Because the human mind likes to look for patterns, I thought, “Okay, what am I learning here?”

I’ll tell you.

Since when did my writing involve having to have a web page?  When did it become this thing that I have to beat myself up about not doing to a certain level every day?  All the things, which surrounded and were meant to support my writing had reared their respective heads and consumed my writing before my very eyes.  The minor was becoming the major, you know?

I had become a boiled frog.  You know, in the pot with the heat being turned up slow, so the poor guy doesn’t know he is cooked until… he’s cooked. So, when all this minor stuff came crashing down around my ears, when my frustration got to such a point that I couldn’t stand it anymore, I did something I like to do at such times.

I poured myself a stiff tequila, Don Julio of course, and put on a Lindsey Buckingham guitar solo, recorded live, of course. I drank the tequila and turned Lindsey real loud and felt a hell of a lot better.  I even tweeted about it, so you know it was epic.

Point is, sometimes you gotta say F!@# it, you know?  Let the mutha burn and get back to the center.  

So, that’s what I am doing.  That’s what I have had to relearn on more than one occasion and am having to do again right now.

Trying to write for a schedule, so I can get books out, so I can make money, so I can put it on my web page, so I can gather a throng of fans, so I can…

F!@# that!

Give me a stiff tequila, put on Jackson Browne or my man Lindsey Buckingham and let me chill the f!@# out.