Philosophizing

The other day I was philosophizing and asked, “If a writer posts something that nobody reads, does her head make a sound when it bangs on the desk?”

The resounding consensus was that yes, it does make a sound, and it’s often loud enough to scare a cat or small children who are within earshot of said desk. Profanity—or “flowery, colorful language,” as I prefer to call it—might also accompany that sound.

But I have to think that anyone who has ever written something more than a grocery list has experienced that “head desk” moment of self-doubt and frustration after sharing their work.

You can have the best idea EVER—better even than the OveGlove—and proudly hit publish before sitting back to bask in the glow of praise from the masses. Links will be shared! Comments will be left! You vow to stay humble and remember your roots!

But it stays dark for a disturbingly long time, even upwards of 10 minutes or so (we’re talking writer time here.) There’s no immediate glow to bask in. In fact, there’s not even a spark.

So you go back and read it over again. Still convinced that you hit a home run, you tweet out the link one more time and decide to go start jotting down notes for the next post.

The next post?

Crap. What the heck are you going to write about now? Considering no one liked the last post you put up 15 minutes ago, the pressure’s on to come back with something better, something that will really knock them all dead.

Maybe a post about how you don’t care what people think or if they ever read the stuff that you write? Or maybe a funny take on the writer’s block that everyone gets — everyone does get writer’s block, right?— except it wouldn’t be that funny considering you’re convinced you’ll NEVER BE FUNNY AGAIN!

Taking a deep breath, you resist the urge to just start posting things to stay relevant — you don’t want to be “that” girl — and instead get the cat high with catnip. The tolerance she seems to have built up only slightly disturbs you, but her requests for rolling papers do set you on edge.

To distract yourself, you check for external validation from strangers on the Internet…still nothing.

Emotionally drained at this point, you stare forlornly into your sparsely populated liquor cabinet and think, “I’m an artist, dammit. I can’t work under these conditions.”

Then you remember that you don’t really drink and that your flair for drama has clouded the fact that your sparsely populated liquor cabinet is actually the shelf with your toaster and steamer.

You take that as a sign from the universe to feed your feelings, after which you send yourself an email just to make sure it still works.

It still works. So you sigh. Dramatically. And bang your head on the desk.

The cat rolls her eyes before leaving the room.

So goes the life of a writer.

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