motivate me.

many creative types talk about inspiration. where they find it. how they wish they had some. what it prompts them to make and do.

inspiration, please. i have no lack of stimulating forces sparking my neurons and firing creative thoughts.

what i lack is motivation.

i've often longed for a technology that allows me to download thoughts, unaltered, into a word document and then rearrange them once they're on the page. this is a process i imagine would take about ten minutes or so, central prcessing unit happily humming away while my thoughts were converted into readable files and then opened with a double click. i'd never lose anything to laziness that way, forgetting what i wanted to write because i waited so long to get it down on paper. i suppose, though, that if such a technology existed we'd have bigger problems even than my lack of motivation, problems that involved computers being able to thoroughly probe the human mind.

anyway, it wouldn't really be writing, would it? writing is less about putting pen to paper than it is about losing yourself deep in thought, then looking at the clock and realizing an article you've yet to start is due in seven hours. you think a little bit more, this time about how much you hate writing and wish you'd chosen to be a lion tamer or a barista or anything but this. (you wonder if you could get your old job at the Gap back). the panic starts to rise again, this time coming from your stomach and flooding your brain: you can't do this, you'll embarrass yourself, you won't do this.

all the while, the article remains due at the same time it always has been, so you fight back the panic with promises of a nap once you're finished or a trip to the library or any bribe, really, that happens to work on that particular brand of panic. then you start, keystroke by keystroke, on the article.