Seems that every night at about this time I find myself sitting here. Trying to come up with something to write.

I don't know why it's so important to me that I write something every day. It's just something that I've done lately. Like for the past year or so.

If I don't write something tonight, I predict that the Sun will still rise in the morning. People will go on with their lives, I'm pretty sure.

Is this enough for today? Does this even count as writing something?

It should. That writing contest was won with an entry, a wonderfully written one, about a writing contest. If that can happen, then me writing about writing should at least count as writing.

I have three problems here.

Problem the first. I've got nothing.

Problem the second. When I do get something I don't want to write about it.

Problem the third. When I do get something and I do want to write about it, I find that whatever creative juices I've possessed have dried up.

Being creative would be a lot easier if I were a painter. You should see some of the crap they have hanging on the walls at work. One giant atrocity has sixteen chickens arranged in a checkerboard pattern. Another looks like somebody took a real painting and sprayed it with a garden hose for a week.

My favorite, my favorite though is get this - a huge (8'x8') square with blue on top and gray on the bottom. At the bottom of the canvas, on a little brass thingy, it says "Untitled."

No shit, Sherlock.

Hey, I have a title! You could call it "I can't paint for fuck." Or maybe "This may be pointless but at least it's big." I think, however, that the title the artist was really going for was "You may not be smart enough to understand this, but trust me, it's art." It's the Emperor's new clothes, in canvas form.

Painters have it so fucking easy. Even the more traditional works, the ones that contain actual scenes - they're worth a thousand words, right?

A good writer with a thousand words is just getting started. A great writer will say more in a single paragraph than the greatest painting could ever say.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd. - William Shakespeare

Go ahead, paint that.

Okay, this has to count as writing something. I quoted Shakespeare. I said "fuck." This has to be enough. What else could you possibly ask for?