Of the five trillion megabytes of data on the Internet, Twitter is one of the little corners of the World Wide Web capable of raising my blood pressure in 2.2 seconds.  The ignorant and the stupid congregate to spout nonsense and have it co-signed by followers who are equally as vapid as themselves. Twitter, quite frankly, is a concentrated display of this generation’s idiocy. I had to make a conscious decision to stay the hell off Twitter between 7-10AM because I couldn’t handle being so frustrated before I’d even left the house. In a few keystrokes, a person I’d never met, halfway across the country, could have me downright furious. (Perhaps, I ought to choose who I follow more wisely or stay off Twitter altogether, but that’s another topic for another time.) It seems ignorance reigns at all hours of the day, because at 10:22 PM yesterday I scrolled past this:

“It's not that girls ain't shit, but being a girl ain't shit.You're the shit when you find out WHO you are, not use WHAT you are to get ahead.”

Ever since I saw the Sydney Opera House lit up on my mother’s analog TV in 2000, and saw the Olympic rings splashed everywhere, I’ve spent the four years between the games, waiting in fidgety anticipation for the summer when it’d all happen again. From the showboating of the opening and closing ceremonies, to the passion, dedication and pure athleticism displayed throughout the games themselves, I was riveted to the TV for as many events as possible.

A a nine year old island girl whose geography lessons had yet to reveal how many countries there were in the world, what amazed me most was the parade of the participating nations. So many flags waved all in one place. I am still awed now, because the Olympic Games bring together nations of all economic standing and languages, races and cultures, religions and government. It creates a unity that is rarely produced by any other medium. No matter how different the people, the athletes, and the proud supporters back home, we’re all cheering about the same thing.

I have had a chronic case of writer’s block. The kind of writer’s block that leaves a blank Word document open on your laptop for weeks on end. The cursor blinked rhythmically like the tapping foot of a school marm, making me feel like an incompetent idiot. Trying to appease the impatient cursor, I’d tap out a few words, then smash the backspace button and make my way over to Tumblr where I could hide amongst the other stifled artists.

That’s the thing about writer’s block. It can kick you in the knees and leave you sitting on your ass, feeling like a failure. And that’s exactly what it did to me. I had a serious crisis of self-doubt considering that I had already put three years and thousands of dollars into pursuing a career in writing. I’d been reduced to stalking my dream of being a writer, sort of shuffling along behind it at just fast enough of a pace to keep it in sight; but active pursuit, there hasn’t been any of that lately.