An Ode to Inadequacy...Assignment 1?

Here I am; my pen floating idly over a mockingly blank page. The neurons are firing, the ink is flowing, and yet here I am; my pen floating idly over a mockingly blank page. I’m trying to find the words. And, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m at the lower end of the curve. What’s worse, the journal containing this page is not even of German origin. Sorry Shawn, but as a poor starving college student, a 3 euro tub of yogurt won over a new journal. If I spoke German, perhaps I would have realized that said tub was in fact one of sour cream and not yogurt, in which case the journal may have been in the running. But alas—what’s done is done.

I want it to be good.
I want you to be interested. I want to be compelling.

I gaze in awe at the beautiful world into which the author has taken me. The words seem to breathe in a way that mine never will. How does he do it? The mellifluous phrasing bites at my eyes. And the carefully placed parenthetical statements, which recreate the tangential nature of memory with the subtly of a true artist, seem only to further illuminate my lack of creativity. Three paragraphs and suddenly I find myself bitterly drowning in high-school-esque feelings of inadequacy.

Oh but I’ve tried. Believe you me. I’ve tried. Yet each time I do, my words seem to come off as an awkward soliloquy from a wannabe Juno one act. Have a varied register. Pepper with some offbeat phrasing. Paint a picture. Be there. And take them with you.

And maybe one day I’ll get there. I’ll have that moment of “look mommy, I can do it too--nine months of prenatal diabetes and eighteen years of your time and money weren’t completely for not.” But, in light of the rambling drivel that has comprised my blog so far, I’m going to go ahead and assume that day isn’t today.

And so, here I am; my pen floating idly over a mockingly blank page.