My Muse Has Been On Strike

I spent the month of January being good.  Really good.  I worked a ton of hours, went back on Weight Watchers, and cut scotch out of my diet (again).

The result is that there’s three pounds less of me to love (which is a little discouraging – with my food and alcohol sacrifices there should be at least 20 pounds less of me to love, according to my calculations), and our checking account is looking a bit healthier.

The downside is that all creative thought seems to have vanished from my brain. I attribute this to a fixed-sum game of ideas – my project, which was a ton of fun, forced me to funnel my clever and witty side (!) into paying work. And you, dear readers, have paid the price, with fewer and less amusing posts from yours truly.

But perhaps it’s lack of proper nourishment rather than that zero-sum game.  Do you think ideas are related to a bad diet?  I swear I do.  Surely fast food and liquor light up the creative brain cells. How can anyone be expected to be clever when lunch consists of pita bread, 19 cups of lettuce and two scrawny pieces of turkey bacon (PointsPlus = 5)? And when an afternoon snack is either a bowl of blueberries or a bag of carrots and sugar snap peas?  Topped off by the insult of saying “no” to a wee dram.  Is this the kind of diet that Mark Twain existed on??  I ask you!

OK, so I wasn’t exactly Mark Twain to begin with. Details.

If you’re not buy the work or diet theory, let me try floating this one – I’ve been listening to The Teaching Company’s series on Medieval England.  Has getting this college-level history piped directly into my brain via my iPod while out walking the dog somehow damaged the right-side of my brain?  Have I become so intellectual and such a brainiac that I’ve, heaven forbid, lost my ADHD, fun-loving, flibbertygibbet side?

Oh pish, posh.  I don’t buy it.  Sometimes the writing well just runs dry, and all you can do go back to the keyboard and try one more time.

Come back, my muse!  I’ve missed you!  Haven’t you missed me? Just a little?