Don't think; just write

Some days I thank God for this outlet, Brent's Polemics. Then I ask for more.

***

A dynamic, constantly pondering mind is often the writer’s defining characteristic. This mind has no place in a bland office building. My mind is surrounded by confining soundproof half walls. Did I mention that my cubicle is gray?

Here at Big Environmental Engineering Firm, where we prepare proposals that describe such palatable company services as “wastewater engineering,” the writing style calls for not much style at all. “Sell!” is the writer’s battle cry, and not much else.

How inspiring. It is inspiring for some, I suppose. For me, it is a weight on the spirit. “Earn a salary writing about someone else’s stuff or write for yourself and starve,” the vague yet ubiquitous voice of control tells me.

The facts of such a writer’s life are frustrating. They drive the creative mind in me batty.

The system is inefficient, I tell myself. I have ideas. I am passionate. My mind is always thinking. Couldn't the world benefit from me in some way better than this?

***

“Baby, why are you always thinking so much?!?” my beautiful redheaded Heather frequently asks me, exasperated with my constant ranting about politics, God, philosophy…you name it. “For just once, I’d like to relax and not think!”

She is right. If only I could earn my way by writing about the important things in this world, the things that inspire my mind, perhaps I could then relax and not think.