One of the downsides of working the job I was (not that I’m not grateful for my time there) was that it seemed to sap me of all inspiration of creativity.  For the past several months my imagination was so paralyzed I couldn’t even find the willpower to push out the occasional blog post.  And, as I have said here before, if I’m not posting blogs, then I’m not writing.  It’s not that I haven’t had the desire to write, it’s just that I’ve not felt able to write.  So the well has been dry for the last little while.  But you’re reading this now, and that means that I’m coming out of it.

Part of taking this trip back to Maryland was to try to recapture that.  I knew I needed a break if I was going to rekindle it.  Simply finding another job as fast as possible wasn’t going to fix anything.  After a week or so of just relaxing and meeting up with friends whenever they were available, I started doing some reading, and also watching some of my favorite movies, as well as some that I’ve been meaning to watch forever.  It’s amazing how much watching a really great movie makes one want to write.  Like many writers, I tend to be extremely critical of the things I write, but somehow despite that I still believe that somewhere inside me are great stories that people should hear.  Perhaps I believe they are there, I merely doubt my ability to convey them in a manner that anyone would be able to tolerate.  The one exception to that is with blogging.  Right or wrong, I consider blogging to be garbage writing, so I don’t really care what comes out except insofar as I’d like it to be understandable.  I mean, sure, I want you to like it… but it’s not like, some compulsive need.

I have a few ideas of writing projects and I’m going to start working on one of them today.  Since coming out to Los Angeles, I’ve been a bit lost and without direction.  It’s nice to have some direction again, and I’m going to be a bit more focused on the end goal this time around.  Part of the problem may have been that my goal at some point changed, and I don’t think I updated the plan to go along with it… simply “having a job” vs. “Not having a job” wasn’t enough.  That goal is to be a staff writer for a serialized show.  Since most of my writing projects have been features or shorts, it’s pretty important that I spend some time working on some good specs.  I still need to pick a few shows to do specs for, but a friend and I are planning on working on a spec for the renewed X-Files.  So I’ll be watching a lot of that in the very near future.

I’m glad I still have a week here to continue along in a pressure-less environment for just a bit longer, but I also feel like I’m ready to go back.