Michelle's House of Horrors

Sometimes when I am writing, I know pretty much what I want to say and it just flows out. I edit a bit, but it’s like taking dictation.

Other times, it’s just stuck. I have an idea, but nothing I do can make it work. I’ll abandon and return..but sometimes it is just dead.

Then there are the times when I have no ideas at all.

My favorite times are when I start out thinking that I know just what I am going to write but things take off in a direction I wasn’t expecting at all. Maybe “favorite” isn’t quite the right word. The most revealing times are when that happens. The times when I get to the end and think OH.

That isn’t what is going to happen right now.

Nothing is what seems to be happening.

I have ideas. A lot of them. I just don’t want to write any of them. It’s not that I am struggling to write them, I just don’t want to even start.

Inspiration? Lacking.
Motivation? Well. I’ve been staring at this screen for a while. I even locked myself in my room so I would stop being distracted by old movies. It didn’t work. I still don’t feel like writing a thing.

I’m laughing at myself because nothing says I have to write anything. I’m not in deadline. I don’t have a boss expecting a certain quantity of words. This isn’t my job. I can not write whenever I want to, but when I tried I got all twitchy.

So I wrote. Anything. Shrug. Nothing.
Some words.
String together.

I think it must be time to sleep.

After a somewhat odd conversation at work, I decided that what I really need now that I am re-entering the dating world are some tips on talking to men.

What I remember from the last time I was single is that I have a tendency to terrify the poor dears. Not that I want one who is easily frightened, but I am sure there are some improvements I can make to avoid scaring them unnecessarily.

Call it a personal CQI project.

Here are a few of the things I have learned that I should avoid. All taken from real life experiences.

1. Never refer to digging shallow graves when talking to men. They do not want to imagine you as someone who has experience hiding bodies. If they are the kind of guy who finds that attractive, there is a good chance that you do not want to date them.

2. Men do not appreciate the topic of castration. Someone I had known for a year stopped talking to me entirely when I joked about castration one time, and it wasn’t even a joke about neutering humans. They are very, very squeamish about it, even if you are just mentioning that one of your friends showed you how to operate something called an Elastrator which is used for livestock. They will not find it anywhere near as funny as you did. This cannot be overstated.

3. Friends tell me that I should not ask a man if we are on a date if we go out together. This is confusing to me because I spend time with a lot of male friends. Sometimes it seems like it has veered from hanging out to dating, but apparently just asking if you are on a date or just hanging out is weird.

4. If possible, avoid mentioning that melon ballers remind you of the device the eye bank uses to scoop the eyes out of donors. Even if you have never actually scooped the eyes out of a corpse personally, most men find it disconcerting as a concept. Hard to believe, I know.

Maybe it would be safer to just never leave the house.

Or maybe I should consult someone who actually knows about having a civilized conversation.