I Need to Find Another Muse

Here it is, 5:30 in the morning, and I’m still waiting for inspiration to strike. Crack! Something hits me on the right side of my head, somewhere between the four hemispheres of the cerebrum and the cerebellum.

“Hey,” I yell, “Not so hard—that hurt!”

It’s my Muse, and she’s obviously ticked off, probably remembering the last time I asked for advice and didn’t take it. Maybe she’s been trying to connect with me all week, through all of my over scheduling and over committing.

“Sorry,” she says, “Just trying to get through to you. Now that I have your attention, I have something for you.”

“Understood,” I say, “I’m all ears, what do you have?”

“I have two rock-solid suggestions,” she says, “The first is a really good one, if I must say so myself,” She smirks, just a little.”

“Okaaay,” I say cautiously, already, I don’t like her attitude.

“How about writing about your cooking? Everyone loves to read about the misfortunes of others.”

“No,” I tell her, “Absolutely not. I’ve already written about cooking a turkey once, and it was excruciating. Took away all of my confidence, and I couldn’t cook for a week. What else do you have?”

“Fine. You didn’t like that, but here’s another one—this one is more current,” she says, “It’s Spring, so write about your garden.”

“No, I don’t think so, look, it’s been a miserable winter, causing the perennials to wither and the shrubs to shrivel up, then we had a blast of hot weather, with no seasonal rain, which is supposed to happen in March. Once the rains finally came, it was so cold that the plants retreated further into the ground. And now that the warm weather is back, there is a tremendous amount of wind—things look pretty dismal out there, so no, I don’t want to write about my garden!”

“Alright, you’re totally impossible to please today, I should really go, and leave you alone, so you can work it out.”

“No, no, ” I beg, “Just stick around a little longer, I am nothing without you!”

“Well, I have only your best interests at heart, so I’ll stay for awhile, but I’m not going to serve you any more ideas on a silver platter. I will, however, spend some time dialoguing with you.”

Dialoguing, if that’s even a verb, is not my thing, but I hesitate to say so—who doesn’t like to dialogue with their Muse?

I sigh. “Okay, let’s dialogue. You start.”

“Fine. Let’s start with a vision exercise. I know we don’t have time to build an entire vision board, but we can explore your objectives for this blog.”

I groan, suspecting she has been listening to her motivational tapes again, but I’ll bite. At this point, I’m desperate.

“Well, for whatever it’s worth,” I begin, “I set out to accomplish…..just a minute, wait…it’ll come to me…”

“Oh, forget about it, this is futile,” she says exasperated, ” I’ll just have to pull out the tried and true, something that never fails me. I’ve got another one, it’s good, believe me.” She pauses, goes off the grid. Just when I think she has gone for good, she comes on again.

“Here’s a website that will give you all of the answers you want, and more.” She recites the letters and slashes flawlessly, dots included.

I type it out and click on it…it really is everything I need right now, but one thing bothers me, It’s about finding a Muse—have I irreparably hurt her feelings, and does this mean she wants me to find someone else?

“Why would I need a new Muse,” I whine, “I have you.”

“But don’t you see, Diane, you are work. And I have better things to do.”

“Just a minute,” I say, reading on, there is so much information here—I love it!

“This is good,” I tell her, “Where did you find it— Google?”

“No, silly,” she yawns, signing off,  “I asked Alexa.”