750+ words

Dammit. I skipped four whole days of writing just because I failed to complete the quota that one fateful night. There was no reason I couldn't have just picked it back up the following night, but such is the self-perpetuating nature of failure. Like, dammit, I'm already on the Wall of Shame, so what's the point now? But dammit, the desire to avoid said Wall was supposed to be just one tactic to get me writing, and not the end goal.

Let me back it up. On December 1, I signed up for 750words.com, having stumbled upon it through a series of Twitter-stalking events. Since I have no attention span, I never properly read the background on the site, but it's somehow either inspired by or affiliated with The Artist's Way. Unlike in the book, which I haven't read either but have heard about, you can write at any time of the day, and it can be about anything, as long as it's 750 words every day. You can also set rewards and consequences for yourself, in addition to the ones built in: fulfill the month, and be added to the Wall of Awesomeness; miss even one day, and be added to the Wall of Shame.

I did really well for 20 days, efficiently multi-tasking through my entries. I would type emails into this space and happily smack my lips, watching the word count increase as I responded to mundane inquiries. I love turning decrepit activities into games, especially ones that don't entail any competition.

Aside from using the word space for emails and other required write-ups, I used the words for making time-tables. An example would be the following:

"I love breaking my word count into chunks. I can't believe the end of this sentence will already be twenty-two words. This is pretty goddamn fucking amazingly off the motherfucking charts. I guess I am losing any incentive to exercise brevity and write clear, crisp, and concise sentences; I have absolutely no remaining will to do so, in fact. Hellz yeah, I will soon be at 100 words. I will celebrate by watching an episode of The Office. At 200 words, I'll wash two dishes. At 300 words, I'll watch another episode of The Office. Well, hello, Michael Scott!"

I just did a word-waster within a word-waster. I rock.

What's the benefit if I'm just gonna spew out a bunch of crap like this? Well, creation always entails an element of self-discovery and therapy, and when you put it out there, sometimes others might get a laugh or some weird inspiration from it too; my honest dating profile and honest cover letter came from this project. Of course, if you exercise the level of indiscretion I do, you greatly increase the odds of people being like wtf what a weird-ass moron – but if you don't create and/or don't put it out there at all, you definitely won't gain any benefit from your potential for doing so. So, if you axe me, no exercise that gets your wheels churning and gets you to put any crap from your mind down into a tangible medium of expression is really a waste of time. Then again, I am anything but a high-class broad, and people who have studied this-and-that in this-and-that pretentious setting (dammit, "this-and-that" only constitutes one word, as I suppose it should) would likely be rather horrified by my preferred art, which nowhere features any hoity-toity mind-numbing esoteric hogwash. I mean, I'm sure the message is fine, but can you put it in a commercial hip-hop song or cartoon or Bollywood movie and make it fun and accessible instead of embracing it for being all fucking exclusive when it actually isn't anything that special or different from what all the slumdawgs know and live every day anyway?

At this point, I have no idea what I'm even talking about, but at the end of this sentence, I'll only have 68 words left! And guess what? I ain't stoppin' there!

By the way, the way I had lost that one night was that I got REALLY into the storyline of The Office at my 500-word break past 11pm, and I decided to watch another episode right after it. When I picked up my laptop to complete the entry, it was too late!

Also, this is my nth blog, where I have copied and pasted the better entries from a bunch of other blogs; the idea was that everything on here would be a "piece" that stood well on its own and that could be developed into something better for a collection (which I will soon put together and have published after I put my life together with the help of 750 daily words to break up my tasks). But fuck it! I should just put down whatever I want to put down.

In conclusion, just because I missed a day of walking, yoga, and writing doesn't mean I should hold a pity party in bed for the rest of my month.

Merry Christmas!