Famous late author Kurt  Vonnegut said something along the lines of, “When I write, I feel like an armless and legless man with a crayon in my mouth.”

Aaaand that pretty much sums up the creative writing process.

Especially if you are very critical about your writing, no matter the form, it makes the process so much more painful at times. As most of you have noticed I have not been blogging with the frequency that I once did and there are a few reasons for that.  The least of which is that my priorities recently are focused more on my budding and sputtering online business. The life of an entrepreneur is nothing if not challenging, both to make the business a success and also in self-management.

Once you work for yourself you start with two major problems…

#1 Your only employee is lazy.

#2 Your boss is an asshole.

But aside from that, my writing has suffered because for the last year or so I have found the creative process very daunting.

Basically, I am out of practice.

Its like my jump shop. I could be sinking 3-balls for all of August, but take me off the court for a year and I could start building schools in Haiti with all the bricks I clank off the backboard.

The more we practice, the more defined the neural pathways in our brain become regarding whatever task we happen to be challenging ourselves with.  It doesn’t matter if its something simple like finding our way to the bathroom in a new office, or sitting down to write your first screenplay.

I used to write so often that making the transition between thought and blog post were nearly seemless, yet now it seems I am dragging myself through the mud with lead boots, chained to an anchor.

Now I have to find ways to force myself to write.

Its no shock that I have a lot of opinions, everyone should. Our entire lives should be a perpetual dance of assessing and reassessing our perspective of the world around us in comparison with the perspective of others.

And in deconstructing certain topics on Perfectly Turbulent I find my opinions evolving, and begrudgingly having to accept that sometimes time honoured opinions must be left in the dust.

If you have any topics you’d like me to deconstruct, or questions you’d care to hear me sound off on, please let me know.

Let’s dance…

The written word.

It seems to be something everyone has an opinion on, and rightfully they should.

We all have our favourite writers, or `’authors’ if you will.  We all own a million words placed between covers that we`ve absorbed that has resonated so deeply within us that it has awoken something we never knew existed.  

Inspiration rising from the ether.

Perhaps these words have released a pattern of thought that has waited decades to reach your fragile mind, and for that, you`ll always be grateful.

Perhaps a new novel has given you solace in a time you were not quite sure there was light on the other side, and for that, you`ll forever embrace the memory and the gift of hope.

Perhaps a chance meeting with a short story has given you some intangible insight, some hidden knowledge, that dared change the direction of your once certain mind.

It is these emotions that make every reader a viable and valuable critic.

Those that remain in their editorial ivory towers only carry so much significance.  Their value is in their ability to dissect the awful and grammatically handicapped authors from those that offer enough substance and depth in a legible format to their work to give any reader the opportunity to create their own moment. 

The author provides the words and the story, yet it`s still the reader that provides the magic.

A day as any other, I found myself in a Starbucks typing away on my laptop, trying to make my way through a to-do list that would rival a grocery list for Jon and Kate.

Since I tend to do my work in a number of different coffee houses, or as my friend calls them, “My Satellite Offices”, I’ve learned to block out the various conversations taking place around me. But at times, some nearby conversations break through the barrier.

The other day, sitting behind me were a group of people that in their various topics somehow landed on Scientology.

For those of you, like myself, not very interested in learning about yet another religion, here is some short copy on Scientology:

“Scientology, on a macro level, teach that people are immortal spiritual beings who have forgotten their true nature. Its method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counseling known as “auditing”, in which practitioners aim to consciously re-experience painful or traumatic events in their past, in order to free themselves of their limiting effects.” (Wikipedia)

So far, it sounds no different than a new age self-help book, but to understand their thoughts on the universe, try to stay with me.

 Here’s a brief excerpt:

“75 million years ago, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu who was in charge of 76 planets in our part of the galaxy, including our own planet Earth, whose name at that time was Teegeeack.

All of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178 billion people. Social problems dictated that Xenu rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation problem, so he developed a plan. “  (http://www.skeptictank.org/gen3/gen01985.htm)

It just gets weirder from there.

So as you can see, Scientology quickly goes from interesting to Star Trek in about 4.5 seconds, and of course it’s the latter information that is always the conversation started.

So back to Starbucks…

So the people behind me started discussing Scientology with one another, making a number of jokes and jabs that I found hilarious.  They even saw me laughing and I had a chance to add a couple one-liners to the mix before going back to continue my battle with hotmail. It was all in good fun, god bless Starbucks.

But what came next surprised me, and provided me enough laughter for the rest of my day.

As the Scientology chat ended, I noticed their conversation shifted to their own lives. One girl gushed how about her niece’s upcoming baptism, and later another told of his trip to Rome and how he felt so blessed to be able to see the Pope while he was visiting Vatican City.

I found this juxtaposition of conversation absolutely hilarious. I almost looked around to see if I was on Punk’d.

I desperately wanted to turn around and ask them,

“So just to be clear, Scientologists are crazy and laughable because they think humans descended from aliens, but pouring water on a baby’s head so that a ghost will protect them is what? Sane? Practical maybe?

How about worshiping the words of a man in a big ridiculous hat that teaches Africans that condoms cause aids?

Allow me to take that one step further to remind everyone that catholics are the ones that believe their god created an enormous worldwide flood that murdered an entire civilization and Noah restarted the population with his ark and whomever he gathered on his ark. But don’t forget, god loves you.

These don’t cry out to me as the teachings and beliefs of a mentally stable organization.  

This aspect of religious people is probably the most interesting to me, the fact that they cannot see the parallels of absurdity between their own beliefs and that of other religions they seem to vilify so often.

If you consider yourself a Scientologist, a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jew etc., you absolutely must believe in things that don’t make any sense. In essence, that is faith. 

So, if your argument is that you simply believe and actively refuse to think about your own doctrine, that’s fine.   Believe it or not, I respect people who take that stance. At least it’s somewhat acknowledging they’ve never thought about it, and actively have no plans to do so.

But when you make fun of different religions, assign them as “crazy” but later walk into a building that shows a man being brutally tortured and then get in line to drink his blood and eat his body…   

Well, you’ve just promoted yourself to a whole new level of crazy.