Two Weeks

At least, that's what Blogger tells me it has been since my last post. Alas! Such is the difficulty of contributing to a blog with no direction. In many ways, it is freeing, in other ways, it is a recipe for writer's block. I went with that choice under the assumption that nothing I wrote otherwise; be it about politics, movies, music, literature, history, economics, the like, would have been particularly new or revelatory or really all that well produced, but perhaps a goal or overarching theme would have also created a better sense of what to write about.

To slightly change subjects, although maintain the general idea of coming up with subject matter; is it any wonder so many in the creative industry smoke? Smoking does a multitude of horrible things to your brain, lungs, heart, veins, pretty much anything in your body that can be made worse for the wear is so by smoking. Yet, smoking also increases the same chemicals that anti-depressants increase, causing uptake inhibition in things like serotonin and dopamine, and it also stimulates, rather strongly, the area of the brain associated with creativity. Stephen King, and I will crudely paraphrase here, has a quote where he basically explains that given two writer's, with equal talent, but one a smoker and one that does not, it will become apparent that the smoker is the better writer.

This is not, of course, to come out in support of the single largest cause of preventable death that the world has ever or probably will ever see, nor in support of the massive corporations that continue to proliferate arguably the single most toxic invention ever created by humanity.

But, there are days, as has been the last month or two for me, where ideas, not only for this blog but for short stories, Tweets, or any content that involves the proverbial pen to paper, are few and far between, and any drug or action that can increase brain activity (smoking is not the only one, but it's the only one I have ready access to, given the illegality of just about every single drug in existence, and the relative impossibility of human intimacy, another creative promoter [to keep things PG]) is somewhat alluring. Alas, though, the dangers and cost of smoking, and the dangers and cost of procuring other things is a hindrance, and while short term stimulation is there, the end result should be to brainstorm ideas on my own, I think, not at the whim of some chemical reaction. So it goes.