My Head is Harder Than Your Wall
That’s what I came up with. I was trying to think of something to write about, trying to think at all through the blasting of Lady Gaga two doors away as my kid took a forty-minute shower and I kept yelling at her about the water bill.
Remember MySpace? I was a late adopter. By the time I found my way to MySpace (mostly to exchange emails with a friend at work whose work email didn’t like mine), people were starting to move to Facebook.
Anyway. My MySpace profile wanted a quote, and that was what I used. “My head is harder than your wall.” Meaning you’re not going to stop me. I’ll just bang on obstacles until I get through.
I’ve been thinking about that lately. Ten hour work days? Not stopping me. Understanding the difference between conditional and subjunctive tenses in Spanish? Not stopping me. Writers block the size of a semi? Not going to stop me. A fifteen-year-old drama llama with me as her only target? Well, okay, that slowed me down more than once. But I limped on. I have a deadline. People are counting on me. I have a story to write, and characters I’m falling in love with. Gotta keep going. Keep writing. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat.†
There’s a quote attributed to Confucius. “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.” Sometimes that’s the best mantra out there. Sometimes it’s the only one that can possibly help.
Just. Don’t. Stop.
It’s been a rough year already, and we’re only four months in. But I’ll keep stumbling on, and I won’t stop. It would be just too hard to get moving again.
And besides, that stupid wall isn’t going to knock itself down.
†This is a very slight paraphrase from the marvelous NaNoWriMo pep talk by Neil Gaiman. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor.