When I was in school my head was bursting with ideas and the only way to get them all out was to write. Back then I could string a sentance together and no one would know that someone like me could have written it. Graceful, full of charm and even a hint of poetry would slip out from time to time (not that I would ever have shown anyone). I look at this now and wonder... where did it all go?

Obviously years of insanely mind-numbing IM's (just "LOL" for example), patheticly boring work days, gut wrenchingly pitiful locals and an overly "techy" life could have something to do with it, but still... could that be all it is?

I don't know if it's too much writing about technology. Stringing together seemily endless, point-missing strings of numbers and letters into a shattered mess of algebra could possibly have ruined the creative soul in me, I can see that. Too many long written paragraphs that would have much better suited a simple comparison table, lists of features which only a handful of people care about and answering questions in ways that people who call iBooks "White ladies" would understand have perhaps blurred my immaginative metaphors.

Then again it could be a lack of stimuli. I have forgone the sad, dribbling, wreck making existence of your average couch potato for years, instead gaining stimuli through a number of other sources. I am a big advocate of web-based media; blogs, news discussion websites, podcasts, vidcasts and IPTV. I like to listen to other peoples opinion about the things that interest and matter to me, and I like to discuss that... even if it's mostly one sided conversation (viz. me replying to the oblivion that is the Junk Mail box).

I chat a lot with friends online through a number of resources. Skype has saved my cell phone bill over the past few years like you wouldn't believe. The other day I figured I would have spent over 30,000 US Dollars on cell bills if it weren't for Skype, and that's not taking into account the cost of international calls. Still, like most audio based conversation it's mostly gibberish banter, mostly with people who agree with me, and I like-wise, so we never really have a discussion so much as patting each other on the back for being similar (and yet we are inevitably so different).

Does all this suck the creative soul over time? Is it loneliness, or perhaps it's the lack of privacy. Over-stimulation or lack of real stimulation? Perhaps I am just getting old, but this writing thing is much harder now than when I was sixteen.