When Even Toilet Paper Is More Creative Than You

I was flat.

After writing daily for the better part of a year, I’ve noticed one thing. Possibly many things, but for this exercise, let’s call it one.

My mood at the end of my writing sessions depends on my writing.

When it’s witty and flowing and I can string together more than six useful words, I’m usually upbeat. If I spent hours producing a blank screen of crap, my optimism and outlook leave the chair pretty beat up.

This was one of those days.

Half an hour after finishing my day’s work of writing and drinking coffee, I was standing in a department store browsing half-empty shelves. A few minutes later, I was standing at the assisted self-checkout, swiping right with my purchases, doing half of the company’s job while an automated laser beam system did the other half.

Sterile, sub-human, boring.

As I mindlessly worked my second “job”, filling in for employees no longer employed by <insert name here> department store, I wondered how the two remaining store employees felt.

One stood there, with nothing to do, while us buyers and laser beam systems did our jobs. Her colleague stood on the other side of the crowd control barriers with nothing to do but watch people enter and exit the store.

They looked more dead inside than me. Maybe half way through their shift they swapped places. Mixed it up and showed some life.

I could only hope.

I needed a change of scenery, so I mixed it up.

I made a pit stop to relieve myself of eight cups of coffee — and read the work of a writer paid to publish fortune cookie inserts on toilet paper.

For a moment, I flat lined.

My writing wasn’t even good enough for toilet paper.

And the toilet paper knew it.

But as I walked back past the department store windows and the stack of 11,000 air fryers, I saw the two store employees again.

Standing there.

Bored.

Earning a paycheck, but at what cost?

-----------

Nearly a week after writing the previous section of this article, I’m back pounding the keys, trying to break through the ‘flatness’.

A flatness brought on by three things: lack of inspiration; the ‘end’ of a pandemic; and a return to whatever was supposedly normal.

-----------

Inspiration

In my online writing world, I feed off the writings and comments of fellow friends and writers. Lately I sense their flatness too.

It caused me to walk away for a few days, but I can’t ignore my writing and sit around navel gazing.

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.” — Mark Twain

-----------

‘End’ of the pandemic

Down here in Australia, we’re enjoying a return to freedom. A freedom we haven’t collectively shared in nearly two years. We should be celebrating, roaring back to life — that’s what the media and politicians are telling us.

Yet I feel flat.

Much like I wasn’t ready for snap lockdowns, no toilet paper, and doing absolutely everything from home back in March 2020, I’m not feeling ready for a snap return to what was previously normal.

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” — Epictetus

-----------

So which way to go in the ‘new normal’?

I don’t want things to revert back to how they were in 2019. And they won’t. The pandemic has changed us and for those of us who survived, it’s given us a chance to change for the better.

Do I return to the ‘norm’ of a standard 9–5 (plus commuting time) job?

It would have to inspire, otherwise, been there, done that.

Writing, one way or another it has to be a cornerstone of my remaining years. I could return to the typical technical writing as it’s probably the easiest fallback, but writing corporate documentation for a fast food client and not be able to write, “Do you want fries with that?”, where’s the fun in that?

So I charge forth and inspire myself with my own tangents and embrace my writing and minimalist lifestyle.

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” — Epictetus

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” — Epictetus

A friend of mine gave his son some straight forward advice as he headed off to college recently, ‘work hard, have fun, and then go make a difference’.

Epictetus also said, “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

Which brings me back to the toilet paper. Keep busy, do good, have fun.

In the end, why worry, because honestly, “who gives a crap”?