Vice
My pen scribbled frantically through the pages of my composition book. Normally I would have been typing, but my computer was off and I couldn't wait for it to boot up. The idea had come to me only moments before, and it was spilling out of my head and expanding faster than I could put it on paper. I was on my third or fourth glass of wine, I wasn't sure anymore, and I was at that familiar place, the perfect buzz point where my creativity was rich and my internal editor was on leave.
Twelve pages, uninterrupted.
I still felt inspired, so I picked up my guitar and started strumming chords to some of my favorite songs, inserting my own versions of lyrics. I’m sure my adjoining neighbors wanted to kill me, but I played until the bottle was empty.
The next morning, I made some coffee and opened up my composition book to last night's starting point. I read what I wrote, expecting an illiterate, confused, drunken mess of silliness while I rubbed my aching head.
The result was the same as always: The music was abysmal, but the writing was pure literary genius. I was amazed at the work I’d done, barely even remembering those thoughts until reading them in the daylight, trying to decipher my sloppy script. I hardly believed that I even wrote it, it was that good.
The hangover, on the other hand, was debilitating and nearly unbearable.
The next time I sat over my open notebook, I had only a cup of black coffee with me as I desperately willed words onto the blank lines. I had so much to say, but I couldn't begin. When I finally wrote something down, I couldn't follow through. After writing a few disjointed phrases, I slammed the book shut and frisbeed it into the next room. A hangover would have been preferable to this writer's block.
I made it so. I went back to the bottle. My resulting and most recent hangovers have thus been as awful as the others, but lately the morning after provides nothing but blank pages. Nothing to impress me. Nothing to read at all. Nothing but a completely non-productive Sunday, half of which I spent on the sofa watching movies, all the while half-tempted to have a glass of wine to help the headache.
“That’s it, I’m never drinking again,” I declared this weekend to my fellow sofa sloth. This time I mean it.
Twelve pages, uninterrupted.
I still felt inspired, so I picked up my guitar and started strumming chords to some of my favorite songs, inserting my own versions of lyrics. I’m sure my adjoining neighbors wanted to kill me, but I played until the bottle was empty.
The next morning, I made some coffee and opened up my composition book to last night's starting point. I read what I wrote, expecting an illiterate, confused, drunken mess of silliness while I rubbed my aching head.
The result was the same as always: The music was abysmal, but the writing was pure literary genius. I was amazed at the work I’d done, barely even remembering those thoughts until reading them in the daylight, trying to decipher my sloppy script. I hardly believed that I even wrote it, it was that good.
The hangover, on the other hand, was debilitating and nearly unbearable.
The next time I sat over my open notebook, I had only a cup of black coffee with me as I desperately willed words onto the blank lines. I had so much to say, but I couldn't begin. When I finally wrote something down, I couldn't follow through. After writing a few disjointed phrases, I slammed the book shut and frisbeed it into the next room. A hangover would have been preferable to this writer's block.
I made it so. I went back to the bottle. My resulting and most recent hangovers have thus been as awful as the others, but lately the morning after provides nothing but blank pages. Nothing to impress me. Nothing to read at all. Nothing but a completely non-productive Sunday, half of which I spent on the sofa watching movies, all the while half-tempted to have a glass of wine to help the headache.
“That’s it, I’m never drinking again,” I declared this weekend to my fellow sofa sloth. This time I mean it.
