Tall Drink of Nerd: Drawing a Blank

It’s 4:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and I have no frigging idea what I could possibly write about for FaN.  Normally, I have something sketched out the week before hand, even if it’s just a few random words thrown together, it’s an idea.  Then I fill it in with all kinds of genius wittiness.  Today, I got nuthin, nada, pfft.  My mind is like a giant sand pit of a desert, empty of all ideas with a hot wind just blowing some dust around.

This morning, when I didn’t have even the faintest clue of what to write about, I figured I would take my usual cure for writers block and go for a walk.  Guess what happened; I got some exercise, possibly a little bit of a tan.  Those ideas weren’t in the mood to let me catch them.

I came home and started to write about my new Droid phone (which is totally awesome) but that ended up as an Andy Rooney type ramble, about how I wish we all still had crank phones and couldn’t bother each other with stupid text messages and email alerts when we went on our creative-healing walks. Not wanting to be negative, I tossed that into my computer trash and ate a banana.

Spoiler alert:  The banana did not help me get any ideas on what to write.

As this is my last blogumn of 2010, I wanted this blog to be all sparkly fireworks and zen wisdom.  I wanted to lay down some deep shit that y’all would be quoting to your grandkids and the like.  Instead, my mind is giving me a finger.  I’ll let you guess which one.

I asked my husband, temporarily playing the part of The Muse, what I could write about.  His suggestion was to rant about people who meander across the street, talking on their cell phone, without a care about jaywalking laws or the giant SUV about to turn them into human bologna.  While those people are annoying and abundant, that is not good enough for end-of-year material and really negative, which we’ve covered.

Since the banana didn’t help, I thought maybe a green salad would.  Can’t all problems be solved with food?  Baby spinach leaves would make my mind get all muscle-y and strong, like Popeye’s arm when he eats spinach. (How dated is that reference?  Did anyone under 30 get that?)  No muscle brain, I just got fed.  No matter how many times I open my fridge or my cupboard doors, no ideas were hiding behind the lentils waiting to pop out and suction onto my face like a parasite in Aliens, planting idea babies waiting to burst out of my brain.

Other things that didn’t help: playing with the cats, scrolling through Facebook, referencing old FaN posts, eating pecan pralines, washing dishes, calling my BFF, sorting socks, mocking my family who live in Wisconsin (because of their big blizzard and our un-seasonally warm temps), writing corny descriptions for the cats at the shelter, opening my thesaurus and pointing at random words, singing a variety of Bill Withers songs, writing a fake column about not knowing what to write.

I’m seriously at my wits end and nothing is coming.  Can you give me a hand please? What in the heck should I write about this week?

featured image credit: Rennett Stowe