I find it hard to balance telling a story with writing a story. I lose myself in either the telling or the writing and end up with crap: good writing that meanders about without saying anything; or terrible writing that tells a story without showing it. The storytelling is in how I blend those two pieces into one.

I don’t have an easy answer for this. It’s the same with thinking. Too much thinking or too little thinking, both are no good. Neither is the wrong type of thinking. The rational mind is sometimes a barrier and sometimes a muse. Take the photography story as an example. I’ve tried the writing-only approach twice and both times I did not end up with much of a story. I tried deep thoughts and rationality and came up with only one obstacle: rain on the wedding day (okay, on the photography day—The Morisette song was stuck in my head). How sad is that? There was also some sort of broken relationship. My originality is truly astounding. Dumbfoundingly so. There are two explanations: I’m a moron (okay, that’s a given), or I really have no ability to tell stories. I can convey what happened but when it comes to creating new happenings, I end up with a blank stare and a rainy day.

Argh. How do I fix this then?

Today was a depressing day. Let me clarify, the day itself was not depressing. Nothing bad happened and even the weather turned decent after a brief rain shower. What I mean is that I was terribly depressed today. It was a combination of missing the Doolies and “The Wire” withdrawal, and maybe a few other minor things thrown into the mix. Whatever caused it, I went around like a zombie searching for brains. I don’t even know what that means. After seeing all those zombie movies, I’m not sure that analogy is apt. I just found myself not caring about much today, going through the motions. Even two cups of yummy caffeine didn’t seem to help things.

But that’s mostly over I think. It’s early evening and I’m tired again. I think another good night’s sleep followed by a busy morning tomorrow should get me out of my funk. It’s not a bad depression. I’m here typing away which is a good sign. It’s not a delicious depression either. Those days find me typing words of incredible emotive power. Yeah, that was funny for me too. Imagine me writing anything with incredible anything, let alone incredible emotions. Except for the little girl bicycling and falling, I don’t think I’ve ever written anything emotional. I probably don’t even have that ability. However much I would like to pretend, I ain’t no Dickens.

That was one of my hopes: emotive writing, along with insightful and choice laden and philosophical and theological and real, always real, and all my other piles of missed but nicely sorted dreams. I have a long list of musings for my writing, and yet here I am, consternating about how poor all of my realizations of those dreams end up. I’m blasting through my word count today. I should be spending these words on something more valuable.