I had a boss who, upon inspecting an inferior piece of work, would always say the same thing: “Pit-i-ful.” He would positively spit out the first syllable, would pronounce the “i” long, and put a grave emphasis on “ful.”

If he read my blog, he’d say “pit-i-ful” with such vehemence that it might crack the earth. My best excuse for not blogging is that Wife and I are having our place painted, and the floors sanded and stained, all because of the bed bug woes of earlier. This requires an inordinate amount of cleaning, planning, and trying to find places to stick Baby without access to a choking hazard.

I am returning from a week away with the in-laws while the contractor does his magic, which, upon inspection, I will utter, “pit-i-ful.” For now, here’s another entry in this forlorn “series” of entries. And before you mutter, “Welcome back!”, this will be, in all likelihood, my last post for a while.

Remember that I am about to go home, alone, to an apartment half finished, sleeping in brain-eating varnish fumes. Then again, it will probably help my writing.

I am cursed with a wealth of ideas. This might not seem like a plague — it’s hardly frogs raining from the sky — but it’s less of a blessing than it would appear upon first inspection.

When I was in college, I started writing my ideas down in a notebook, since lost to time (though you can probably find it if you’re willing to wade through a garbage mountain outside of Chicago). I kept a purple-ink pen latched to the notebook, which was a leather-bound datebook pilfered from the offices of a job I had showing apartments in Ann Arbor, Mich. (I spent more time thinking of ideas than actually working, but never mind.)

There was no orderly progression of these ideas, or real reason for them, other than they were persistent, odd, and occasionally disturbing. If I were to be held hostage, I could probably recall some of the contents of the notebook, which were ideas for stories, characters, band names, and other assorted ephemera that has been largely lost to the mists of time.

I numbered each successive entry, and I know that it passed 100 rather quickly. The best of the ideas were eventually transferred to electronic form, where they reside upon the hard drive of the very computer upon which I write these very words, a very ironic thing indeed since it’s been a very, very, very long time since I’ve actually looked at them. The file is collecting the electronic version of dust, you might say.

Despite the eventual displacement of paper for electronics, and its ultimate demise in landfill, there was a time that I would have guarded The Notebook with the same ferocity as a Mama Bear on amphetamines protects its young. And if you’ve ever had to do battle with a Mama Bear on speed, you’ll know what I mean.

The problem I’ve had with this curse is that I’ve always had great ideas, and burdened by a dearth of ways to express them. If I had the cajones, I would have tried standup comedy, acting, or screenwriting. And if I courted faith in the unburdening powers of mind-altering substances, I would have tried expressing my ideas through interpretive dance.

But, no: I am cursed (again) with reticence of several flavors. I have stage fright that turns me into a zombified caricature of myself, and the fact I am less-than-aggressive makes me ill-suited to the world of screenwriting or other forms of writing that require selling one’s wares or other forms of human interaction.

The situation boils down to this: while I struggle to translate ideas into something worth expressing — an actual short story or novel, for instance — The Notebook remains as real as ever, a Muse or albatross, depending on my mood. I’ll remember a brilliant idea conjured from nothingness two decades ago and think, “You know, Bookfraud, you really are a creative dude,” then remember a cringe-worthy stupidfest of a story idea and think, “You know, Bookfraud, you have the creativity of a robot accountant.”

There’s even a movie about it
I always wondered if others suffer from this ailment. They call writing fiction “the midnight disease,” as it afflicts those crazed individuals at all hours of the day and night. But to be harried by ideas is more like a “dream disease,” as all of the best notions come as if one is in a state of extended stupor.

The Notebook is like the crazy ex-girlfriend: lots of fun and wild-as-a-insane-aslyum sex, but there’s really no way it’s gonna work out in the end. You’ve got to put up with the 3 a.m. phone calls, the stalking, the dead bird at your front door with a note that says, “If you don’t get back together with me, I can’t be held responsible for what I’m going to do next.”

Not that this actually happened to me.  But it’s not a half-bad idea for a story.