February 2nd, 2010 by Neal

Yeah, today. You thought you’d get me, didn’t you? Started out with utter despair, unmitigated funk, and then I turned you around and pounded out three thousand words. What you got, today? Nothing!

EVIDENCE.

Now I must turn off my phone, because if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that bragging about turning a day around leads to dogs dying, guilt calls, or bad news.

But thank you, Muse, for saving me today from myself. I was in a bad place.

Writing really does keep me alive. If anyone really understood the depths of that, I might not catch so much shit from 9-5ers. But at any rate, living is its own reward in that capacity.

There really is no better feeling than thinking you’re going to lose a day to the funk, and then suddenly not. Usually there’s a catalyst. Today it was my new wall, on my desk, which I’ll post about soon. It basically has a graffiti area where I can write lines that come to me, and I popped a couple up that cheered me and pushed me forward. Stupid shit, but it works. Today’s work is brought to you by the line:

“Stop being sad. Just kick against the pricks. Trust me.”

Courtesy half me, half Johnny Cash, but it works either way.

It’s not an optimistic song, and it’s a religious song, making it a strange song to save my day. But it’s also a song about misery coming to reap for the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world, by Cash’s context. It’s a song about eventual success in the wash of a wave of destruction. It’s a song that acknowledges our peril of death, but puts forth the hope that somehow all will be right, even if the process may not always be what we want or our interpretation of truth. That’s conflict. That’s life in the midst of death.