Blarg

I have writer's block.

I'm supposed to write a personal non-fiction essay to turn in on Monday for my class to workshop next week, and it's got to be roughly ten pages give or take.  Basically all the essays I've written for this creative writing class thus far have all been about my own life, thoughts, and experiences.  And some of them have been pretty great, but I realize that personal essays can be so much more than just a "this one time this happened to me." Like, some of the greatest, founding-fathers of essaying wrote essays commenting on society, existential essays about the human condition or meaning of life while describing the life cycle of a moth, essays on walking, and running after one's hat.  And some of the more clever modern essays of our day that I've read have played with form, like writing an essay on dating, modeled after nutrition labels.  So, with this final essay I turn in to be workshopped, I really want to push myself outside my normal style.

More than anything, I really just want to turn in something that is beautiful. Something inspiring.

Most of my writing thus far has been on heavy subjects, kind of depressing, or on light subjects, going for the humorous.  But this one I want to be different. I want it to be moving.

So I've pretty much spent 7 hours today staring at my computer screen, starting essays, and tossing them into the recycle bin.  Doing hours of research on subjects I'm interested in writing on, and googling lists of ideas for topics for essays. Watching videos on these topics for inspiration. And I just keep coming up empty.

But I have learned a great deal of useless information. Like:

• Outer-space is only 1 hour's drive away, if you could drive straight up
• There are more synapses in the human brain than stars in our galaxy
• Kobe Bryant makes close to $30 million dollars a year
• There are so many inspiring and life changing underdogs out there, especially high school teachers, who many people undervalue and who are, in my opinion, super underpaid
• There's some craaaaaazy websites that exist out there
• People are super dependent on the internet, you could basically live the rest of your life never stepping foot outside your house/apartment if you wanted to
• An American woman was recently arrested, and is still in prison, (I think in India) for taking a cab with a stranger who turned out to have meth in his bag
•  A lot of actors, surprisingly, have some legit degrees (Masters, PHDs)

And I've wasted an entire day that I could have spent getting the mountain of other homework assignments I have due on Monday done. And I'm still drawing a blank on what to write about. 

I love writing. But sometimes I really hate it. #firstworldproblems