I'm feeling creatively bankrupt. I have been for some time. I'm sitting here, trying to come up with a list for work.  As a side note, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to call work "work."   I need to get out of there soon.  but I don't want to leave on a bad note, so I'm trying to do my best before I go.  The magazine world is surprisingly small, and who you know seems to be as or more important than what you can do.  Anyway, I'm working on a story about the new shit being the old shit. Basically, anything from tv to music to cars, etc., how everything new is just a rehash of everything old.  And I can't seem to come up with any.  So if you got any smart ideas, lemme know.
    Anyway, that's what's concerning me these days.  I spent the day pretty much worrying about that.  Speaking of my day, here's a short review:
    Spent the early afternoon doing my laundry and getting some sewing done.  Buttons and whatnot.  Anyway, after that, I headed over to the Entertainment Weekly offices to meet up with Caryn, who redid my resume for me, yet again. It's snappy looking.  Then we walked over to the Rainbow Room where Caryn had to cover some press conference with Tony Bennett, about a new line of record stores or something.  I was feeling awfully "skittish," as Caryn said, so I left right after we got there and walked around for a bit, then headed downtown.   Being in the East Village makes me want to live in Manhattan.  I'm considering it a lot.  I sat in a coffee shop called Des Moines on Ave A for an hour and a half and did some reading.  I noticed an article about a police officer killed twelve years ago, about his killer finally being extradited from the Dominican Republic.  That sort of thrilled me for some reason.  I just felt like I had a personal stake in it, since I had a few signs named after police officers, and I had to call their families and precincts and whatnot.  And it seemed odd that a cop's murder would go unpunished.

    So at the scheduled time, Rodzilla arrived and we had a spot of coffee.  Something's wrong with my bladder these days. I can't seem to hold any caffeine in my system.  I gotta go potty every 15 minutes it seems. I think it's because I don't eat enough when I drink coffee. Anyway, it's bothersome.  So rodzilla wanted to go check out a gym down the street, so I accompanied her on that.  I've been casually thinking about joining  gym since I moved to New York, and this was the first time I actually step foot inside one.  It seemed like a pretty good deal for a year, and I think joining a gym is the only way I'd really get my ass in gear and excercise.  the guilt of having paid for it is a much bigger motivator than wanting to get fit.  Though of course that's the whole point.  It'd be nice to not be winded after going up three flights of stairs.  Anyway, the whole deal was like 500 bucks for a year.  That's a good amount of cash.  Though my roommates told me that this particular gym is probably the cheapest in the city.  I've been sort of thinking about taking a class or two this summer though, which wold cost me about as much as a year at the gym.  But there's a few interests and self-improvement sort of things I'd really like to do.  And I need to get fit.  it's almost bathing suit season, you know.

    So then a pleasant dinner at Two Boots pizza and home.  I'm feeling sort of restless.  Today Rodzilla read a little poem i wrote on the subway the other day, and one Jed wrote.  I thought they were sort of funny, and I think she did too,  but more in a "you're disgusting" way.  Sure the ending was obscene, but that's what's so funny.  Relatively.  Anyway, her other comment was a sort of exasperated "Don't you want to write something substantial?"  That kind of stung.  Not because it was mean-spirited, which it wasn't, but because it's the thought going through my head 90% of my waking hours.  I've been thinking it a lot lately.  I know I have a lot better in me than anything I've done so far.  And have I done anything about it?  I feel like I'm in one of my dreams where I can't run.  Do you ever have those dreams, where you have to run away or something, but your legs won't work right and you just end up trying to get off the ground?  I hate those.  Anyway, I'm not sure if that's the analogy I'm looking for, but something to that affect.  I'm too distracted by the day-to-day little things to keep an eye on the big picture.  I'm spending too much time focusing on the little things that seem important and not enough on building toward my future.  And I'm not tackling the big problems because I can't decide where to begin.  I'm mentally defeating myself before I even start.  And it all centers around writing.  I met this girl in Great Lakes the other night who told us she was just accepted to the creative writing MA program at Iowa, and I was sort of jealous, like maybe that's the route I should have gone instead of journalism.  I don't really think that, but I'm feeling so uncreative lately I don't know what to do. I can't think of anything to write about.  Maybe that's the problem.  I can probably think of a million things to write about.  But then I think I won't be able to find anywhere to get them published, then I think it'll take a lot of work and reporting, and then if I can't get them done or published it'll be a waste of my time.  So i fucking sit around and don't do dick.   Cos I don't know where to start.  I just don't know what to do, and I'm having some trouble finding my direction.  i feel like I'm in a raft, and someone just gave me a little shove off shore, just to show me the general direction, but now I don't know how to steer the thing, much less figure out where I'm supposed to go.  If I could figure out just one these two things, that'd be a huge step.  I thought I knew what I wanted, but lately i'm not sure at all.

    Oh, how difficult life is for the privelaged middle class!  Everything' relative though.  Things are generally ok and I'm pretty happy for the most part and I know I've got it better than a lot of people I see everyday.  This I know.  I'm just frustrated at not reaching my potential.

    It'd be really great if this self-diagnosis didn't end up being another one of my lucid, self-aware complaints that don't result in any change in me whatsoever.  But I suppose that's up to me.  I've been praying regularly for the first time in my life, by the way, in an actual formal, nightly routine.  Though now that I think about it, I'm not sure if that's a good thing.  I think it's just another way I take responsibility for me out of my own hands.

---

 

    I just spent an hour talking to Caryn, and I feel a lot better.  She's good people.

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