Creative Unhappiness

Sometimes I think my best blogs are done when I am in a bad mood. Like some kind of literary lustration; the impetus is there to write – I write and I feel better.

I have always done this. I have many really bad poems from high school and was an angst-ridden teenager (alienation and heartbreak seemed to be my lot back then).

Even in recent years, when I was dumped; I wrote a poem (and ate a lot of chocolate, but that’s for another blog some other day) and was inspired to write a self-help book (which was “Book 2” that I started and never got very far with).

When I had to euthanize Beau; I wrote a poem (about a month later, when I started being able to breathe without crying) and several blogs posts since to help come to terms with his absence from my life.

When I’ve been fearful, or perplexed, or “in a funk” – I have blogged about it.

I am beginning to think that I am like Van Gogh (ok, I know I AM NOTHING LIKE Van Gogh, he was a true artist, I am not, but go with the analogy anyway, I know I’m not brilliant, or bi-polar – for which you are all grateful, no doubt)… where was I… Oh, yes …I am like Van Gogh – who did his best work when his depression was at its most acute. Am I best inspired by angst and anger?

So what happens when I’m NOT unhappy? What happens when, like now, I am quite content, shockingly enough, with my life as it is right now?

As it happens, in an attempt to prove I can be creative and happy at the same time (well, not really), I have once again embarked on attempting to do some creative writing. So far, I have managed to start one poem – which I intended to post as a blog in November (maybe February, as it is, as yet, unfinished); unearth an old “funny thing happened to me” story and turn it into a blog and, wait for it…I have, yet another idea for a book (or long story, which is probably a better name for it).

My long story is behaving exactly like my long stories of old – it exists as multiple parts – like scenes in a movie and they are currently occupying several draft blog postings.

If I can figure out a way to turn my “long story” into a series of short stories, I’ll post the blogs, but they would, most likely, not be posted in the appropriate chronological order which would, I imagine, annoy and confuse those who have the misfortune of reading them.

The problem is I get a part of a scene stuck in my head and I quite like it, then I write it down and try to complete it and take it to some logical end and then I get stuck. The imaginary world in my head requires too much explanation, it would seem – or it’s so far from reality that no one would be able to suspend their disbelief for long enough to enjoy the story.

So if you wonder why my blogging is lagging it’s because in my happy days I am trying to be creative; which is beginning to both stress me out and annoy me – oh, happy days!