And though I had slain a thousand foes less one,
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
--John M. Ford, The Final Reflection

The Asylum Director

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"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any." - Russel Baker

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Drowning Sharks

Factoid: Sharks can drown. Sharks, with the exception of some species, are unable to float in water. If they stop moving, they tend to sink and drown. The movement of their bodies forces water through their gills, and allows them to breathe. In human terms, if they stop running, they choke to death. Interesting, isn't it?

Moving on, then.

I'm bored.

That's a bad thing.

Work has become a near-mindless repetition of things, and frankly, I'm so sorely tempted to find some way to break it. Options come down to getting into some sort of trouble or risking things and trying to find another job. Either one would provide much more excitement than the status quo. I need something to break up the monotony of work or I'll snap and do something inexplicably stupid, simply because it'll end the boredom for a while.

I can feel my mind starting to slowly rot little by little, possibly from lack of any serious use. I try to get into other projects to occupy my mind, exercise my creature urges, but it doesn't work. The problem with that strategy, you see, is that I might be applying it too late. I don't think I have it in me anymore, as my mind has become as lazy as the body. It's nearly impossible to motivate me to think of anything now.

I need to find some idea to occupy the part of my brain that writes before it rots away completely. As much as I like to blend into the background and go unnoticed, I'd rather not have that at the cost of my writing.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's happened before. I endured this same problem at Intelligraph when the project assigned to me stuck with me for a little too long. The monotony and familiarity, along with the relentless repetition of the things that my mind works on, eventually left me feeling empty and depressed. Of course, it didn't help that I wanted to do some not-nice things to my former employer.

The situation now is very similar. I've gone past hatred of what I need to write and have managed to progress into outright apathy. I only do my job because it gets me money. I'm not motivated to really put as much effort into it as I should. I barely even really try or care to try any more. The fact is, I just...don't find any interest in this anymore. It feels cut and dry, and while I know the work isn't completely monotonous, it feels that way. By this point, how it feels matters more than the actual situation.

On the bright side, at least I don't hate my employer. Some of my co-workers, on the other hand...I'll refrain from commenting for now.

Honestly, who'd have thought writing for a living would kill my writing skills? I know I didn't expect it.

The creative mind, I think, is like a shark. It needs constant movement --- and the space to move --- or it'll just...well, drown.

2 comments:

LiQuiDfiRe said...

intelligraph pa rin talaga??? hehe...

me said...

i agree, harvey. creativity is like a shark. either you keep being creative or you stink.