Who's the idiot who invented writing anyway?
It's been one of those weeks where I struggle with any kind of satisfaction with my own writing.  My characters say and do things that are either stupid or just don't make any coherent sense.  It's exhausting.  It makes me question the whole gig.  When the writing sucks, it's easy to start looking at other ways to add meaning to your life.  Maybe I could be better, more productive, more meaningful if I spent the time taking long walks, solving the Theory of Everything, or contemplating the fate of the universe.

And along those lines I started indulging a new distraction in the last couple of weeks.  I had my eye on this eight volume "History of Philosophy" set that's at the University Book Store.  They've been sitting there beckoning to me for months and I finally bit the bullet and got one of the volumes.  I couldn't start with Volume I because it was already gone, So, I have to intuit some of the basics about Greek philosophy and dive directly into medieval philosophy, which I find to be mostly about the struggle to make a distinction between philosophy and theology.  And I LOVE it.  Which means of course that I'm a hopeless geek.  For the most part it's completely useless information; so much counting of angels dancing on the head of a pin.  It has more to do with attempts to construct a false sense of certitude even though ambiguity reigns in the real world.  But it's utterly fascinating to me.  I'll probably buy the rest of the volumes as I feel the urge, but I don't want to read them all at once.  My brain needs a little time to digest it's food.

But, even with interesting brain candy out there trying to distract me, I'm not willing to give up the writing.  The occasional decent stuff I produce is enough to keep me going for now.  And I also draw some perverse encouragement when I watch TV and realize that people are actually getting paid to write some of that nonsense.  I watched an episode of NCIS the other day and they had a female agent looking for her 16 or 17 year old "contact" in Baghdad.  The contact's father had tried to help her brother (a marine) and was killed by other marines for his troubles.  The agent was of course grateful, so she bequeathed this amazing and touching gift: 

"What?  You are giving us your laptop so my younger sister can have contact with the world?  Never mind that you haven't given us a power cord.  Never mind that the conditions of the community don't look like they even have power, let alone any kind of connectivity.  But, thank you, O wise and gracious keeper of holy technology.  This more than makes up for the loss of our father."

At least, that's how it came across to me.  I wanted to throw something at the TV.

And then I watched an episode of Shark.  I love James Woods acting, but the writers are killing his credibility.  They have him diving to the floor to avoid sniper bullets that are shattering the windows of his home, and then a day later he gets upset and takes a walk alone on a dark and deserted road.  He gets picked up in a limo (miraculous timing) by the same guy who was trying to kill him.  But NOW, with nobody watching, the bad guy only wants to give him a low-ball bribe.  Is it too much to ask for just a little bit of intelligent consistency in characters?

I would be embarrassed ... or maybe I should say I am embarrassed to write such ridiculous dreck.  But, I'll continue to plug away with the hope that some day I'll reach a level of competency that doesn't make me cringe without twenty rewrites.  It will probably take years and makes me wish I had started much earlier in my life.  I don't want to become a competent writer just in time to keel over with a stroke.  I might have to make plans to live forever just to get it right.  Or, I can always give it up and become an irritated TV critic.