I'm not really in the mood to write anything today. So... for today's post, I want to explore that. Sounds fun? Let's go!

As I wrote about in my last post (this one) the day before yesterday I started on a no-caffeine diet. Diet? I don't think that's the right word for referring to a maybe temporarily change in the consumption of a single substance. Maybe calling it a caffeine-fast would be more accurate. At any rate, I started on it the day before yesterday. As I wrote about in the post linked above, in the morning I was ok but the rest of the day didn't go so well. I posted that yesterday morning and yesterday was more or less a repeat of the day before: in the morning I was fine, but in the afternoon I had a headache (I assume from caffeine withdrawal) and felt generally grumpy and tired.

^{Image by Pitsch from Pixabay This is kind of how I've felt the past few days.}

That brings us to today. It is exactly 5 am as I sit down to write this. I'm hoping I can knock it out before the kids wake up for getting ready for school in an hour. Right now I feel great: I have what feels like more energy than usual and my mood is high. I don't know if that's from my body adjusting to no caffeine or if I just got better sleep than usual last night. From reading other people's accounts of giving up caffeine, it usually takes about a week to get rid of the headaches and some time after that to completely adjust to a lack of the wakefulness drug. That in mind, I am kind of expecting today to play out similar to the past two days.

My mood and energy may be high right now, but my mind feels really unfocused. I have all the types of posts I usually write—something about a historic Japan-related anniversary for today, a haiku translation and something about it, an original haiku, explaining something random about Japan or Japanese culture, posting a photo or photos and talking about them, doing a LeoFinance post about something money related—but none of them really appeal to me right now. Or rather they do appeal but I just can't focus on what I want to say about any of them. Hmmm. I guess it's kind of a form of writer's block. But writer's block comes largely from perfectionism and judging ourselves too harshly, so much so that our mind eventually stops even giving ideas. This isn't that. This is just... I don't know. Maybe this is what it feels like to have ADHD. 🤔

When I was in high school and university there was a local comic shop I used to visit. At the shop, I used to pick up a weekly newspaper called Comics Buyers' Guide. I really didn't read much of the paper so I couldn't tell you about it very well, but I did always read a column called "But I Digress" by Peter David. The column purported to be about comic books, but in truth it was kind of about everything. David would begin on comic related topic, but he would then meander all over the place for the length of the page, wandering from topic to topic as they came up, hence the title "But I digress". I forget how long they were, but it was a full page so probably at least 1000 words if not more. I really enjoyed his writing voice and enjoyed these rambling essays so much that I would cut them out and save them. I suppose I still may have a large stack of them packed up at my parent's house in the US.

^{A collection of some of his columns}

It's a little reminiscent of some of Natalie Goldberg's writing exercises. The most famous of those may be her "Morning Pages" exercise. For those unfamiliar, the basic idea is just to write in a Stream of Consciousness fashion where you don't worry about (or even use) punctuation or correct grammar, you just get anything in your head down on the paper for a page or two every morning. It's more of an exercise in not judging yourself but it's also an attempt to form the habit of writing X pages for Y hours (or minutes) every morning.

David used a typewriter up until he had his stroke a few years ago at which time he switched to a dictation program on his PC. Goldberg on the other hand always writes longhand with a fountain pen, or at least she used to. I write the first draft of a lot of my posts using the same method, with a fountain pen in my notebook. That's not as tedious as it might sound. Fountain pens don't require that you push the pen down as with a ballpoint or pencil—in fact if you do push down, you will likely damage the nib—so it doesn't require much effort to write out a few pages that way. I find writing away from a computer helps me focus better, which brings us back around to the start of this little word adventure, eh?

^{Image by Andrys Stienstra from Pixabay}

Sometimes, however, when time is more limited I'll write on the PC. In those events, I use a full-screen app that I have configured to look almost exactly like the DOS version of WordPerfect 4.1 did back in the day: solid blue screen, white text, and no visible formatting. I did almost all my high school and early university writing in that version of WordPerfect, so it's something of a comforting environment. This is where I'm writing this post.

Neil Gaiman, who most of you probably know as the writer of Sandman, writes most of his novels longhand with a fountain pen. Stephen King also writes a lot of his novels with a fountain pen. Gaiman has made the interesting observation that whenever he does write on a PC, suddenly his writing becomes incredibly wordy and unfocused. He's guessed that when we write longhand we tend to pause more and think about what we want to say, whereas when we type on a PC it just all spills out. Also when we then type up what we have written, we edit it, usually deleting things or saying them more succinctly, whereas when we type the first draft on a PC there is always a temptation to not bother editing and just running with the first draft. From my own experience I agree with him.

Anyway, it's near 6 now and I can hear my wife preparing breakfast for the kids, so I better finish this up. I'll find a few photos and schedule the post, wake them up, and try to get as much finished before the lack of caffeine ruins this day like it has the past two. If you've enjoyed this ramble, let me know; maybe I'll return to this kind of post in the future. If so, I'll have to think of a title for this kind of post. Any ideas?

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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