High-Ate-Ass

For all of you in-toe-lex-u-alls, I took a break and ate cake. Lots of it.?

Though I am partial to the rich taste of chocolate, with its decadent flavor and bounce, I also had some vanilla for comfort, and yellow for the clean smooth texture.?

I do not care what anyone says, put your tongue around some yellow, and you will be surprised at the succulent, yet fluffy flavor.?

It’s a good palate cleanser.

Also, I highly recommend a nice piece of tres-leche if you want the full-body feeling of a nice piece of Latino bakery on your lips. There is something about Mexican pastries that sends my mouth into ecstasy.?

Enough about my penchant for tasting the human experience the best way I know how through a round piece of cake, this is about taking a much-needed hiatus from pounding out prose like a madman.?

I burnt out the brain box. I fried the wires between my hippocampus and amygdala. Which left me despondent. There just wasn’t any more courage to my convictions.??

And the only solution was to take a break from typing out clever caricatures in the form of descriptions so that I could relax and recharge. Ain’t nothing funny or smart when you keep repeating the same shit under different titles and hoping someone will read your nonsense.

That type of bakery is dry and stale.??

So, I stopped. I put down the pen, closed the keyboard, and let it go. Just like the Disney princess.??

For a long while, I was under the impression that I needed to publish daily to be relevant. And I still believe that to a certain degree, but now, I am not so sure if I need to be so actively involved in putting myself out there so much.??

I fell victim to the belief that I had to keep up with the more seasoned niche writers if I wanted more headway in my return of reads and comments.?

I tried to fit a square peg into a circle. I tried to force my brain into becoming a content mill for the sole purpose of quantity over quality.?

And I couldn’t keep up. Nope. Not me. As much as I thought I could run with the younger bucks, this wasn’t happening. My brain is wired for creativity. Not for volume.?

Just like that, my brain stopped. It refused to participate. I was filling it up with books, and glazing cake whenever possible, thinking that all I needed was the experience to jump-start the ole noggin.?

What I needed was the welcomed release of just taking a break.?

As usual, I had to fall flat on my face. Nothing ever comes easy for me. Not that I am complaining. The hardest lessons are learned when you are flat on your back and you have to pick yourself up.?

Thankfully I was smart enough to realize that all I needed was to step away.?

Too often, myself being the prime example in this montage of word diarrhea, we forget what is important in our quest to achieve a goal. Mine is being recognized as a wordsmith.?

We forget to stop and take into consideration that one of the best courses of action in accomplishing something is to hit pause. Regroup. Reevaluate what is working and what isn’t and then get right back on that horse.?

White Stallion in some circles, but that is not relevant here.?

What it is, is taking a second out of your day and considering for the most part that patience and daily action are very important in this game, but so is having the healthy habit of taking some much-needed rest.?

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’ve come to realize that some of my best work isn’t forced. It’s the half-ass shit I forget I was even writing because I forgot that anyone was paying attention.

It’s the stuff where I am enjoying what I am doing instead of playing a part of competing with imagined profiles who seem to garner better stats than I am.?

And it all resulted because I took a vacay. I stopped writing for a hot minute and ate some cake.?

An illustrator friend of mine told me a story about some of his previous work. He said he would spend hours and hours pumping out piece after piece so that he could keep up with his peers.?

He noticed after a while, he felt that he was losing his edge. His colors didn’t shine like they used to. His imagery was grainy. His umph was deflated.? His energy low.?

My friend felt like he lost his mojo.?

That was until he took a hiatus and rediscovered what drew him to being an illustrator in the first place. He is a creator and not a manufacturer of content.?

I couldn’t help but relate to what he was saying. I was buying what he was selling.?

Going forward, I am going to write. I will always write, but my single purpose now is to create a collage of words in a way that makes sense to the craft.?

Because creativity is not about how much you can produce, but how well what you produce is received.?

For all of you out there uncertain that you need to pump out prose after prose to seem relevant, take a moment to consider if that is the best fit for your creative journey.?

I am going to take more breaks. Read even more books, and eat as much cake as I can.?

For that is the true calling of a creative, it’s to express how good life tastes.?

“Let’s face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.”?

- Audrey Hepburn.?

No truer words have been spoken.