"The air"

Last night I sat in front of my computer for exactly four hours, twenty seven minutes and 38 seconds and this is what I came up with--"The air". Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, I wrote two words. This would have been fine were I to have been distracted by something of...substance. But what was I doing during this period of time between my returning home from work and walking out the door to meet Josh at the pool hall? Drum roll please... I was watching television. That's right...television. The deific idol of the 21st century. The bane of human intellectuality. Case and point, "The air".

I've had writer's block before. It's really no big deal. I mean, what are my words ever going to do to change the world? It is not as if there is even a remote chance that something I write will have an effect on even a minute faction of the population. I've come to terms with the fact that if I am to be a writer, an artist or anything else remotely creative I will be doing it merely as a hobby and not a way of life. The idea of 'starving artist' is astronomically over-rated. It's not nearly as romantic as one would think.

However, what am I to do when my life is empty and I have no social life to speak of and Josh had gone to play pool with his pals and I am left alone inside my thoughts, aching for some sort of creative release and there is... nothing? The obvious answer is...watch television and pretend the world away. Get old, get lazy, get fat. Melt into the sofa and become one with cheese puffs and diet soda-pop and lose the tiny grip on reality that I have left. I'm holding on by my index fingers, my nails crammed against the retched mortar that holds together my sanity. And the one thing that was always my escape from all this, my way out of myself... it eludes me like a tiny bubble floating through the air that dashes this way and that every time I get within an inch and when I finally grasp it in my desperate, greedy hands...it pops and once again I am left with and empty fist. A metaphor for my empty heart--quite fitting given it's approximate shape and size in relation to the throbbing organ that keeps my blood pumping...my brain filled with life-giving blood. Even more fitting given it's connection to the thing which I crave so badly. Without this hand, this fist...I would not be able to write at all...