A Need to be Hungry, the Reprise

In my previous post, I spoke of the physical lack of hunger I’ve been assailed with since last week. I will now talk about the more psychological one: a need to be hungrier for life.

And I mean that in the figurative sense.

Have you ever seen a cat taking a very erect stance as it anticipates for something? An unsuspecting mouse comes out and, as quickly as a blink, this cat starts pouncing on the mouse which has now become a prey? That cat’s intensity and ferocity are what I need. Right now, I feel less like a cat and more like a sheep that’s become enervated from eating wilted grasses.

Where this problem is most prominent is with my attitude about writing. No, I don’t intend to renounce this hobby - I’m actually reading a book about writing, again - but my interest with it needs a spike. I’ve been feeling rather low these days and the search for inspirations has been fruitless. This is not the same as writer’s block, oh no. Writer’s block is merely being unable to put two words together. Lacking inspiration is being able to write, and yet you feel your writings are soulless, like how every words has no purpose but to increase word counts and to foist an image of intelligence.

To be inspired is to be so hungry, that you just can’t wait to suck up every opportunity to polish your craft, until you let it create something worthy of being called art. I gauge this hunger by looking at my unfinished drafts. There are four. Two of them are short stories about music and a modern day Benjamin Button. One is a collection of new words I’ve learned. The last is a post about a friendship turned sour. On my inspired days, I view these unfinished drafts and I get overwhelmed by a desire to finish them. On days like today, I just shrug them off.

Inspirations are what I need, for in its absence life is a drably colored tapestry that everyone wants to get rid of. Maybe beauty will be returned to life when a change of sceneries comes. Things are looking up though, as next July, my sister will be going to Taiwan, and I just might skip an entire week of work and go meet her there.

PS. For samples of blog posts with thought-provoking formation of words, go visit John Silver’s “The One Rant Machine“.