My roommate and I stood out in the post-blizzard cold yesterday waiting for a bus that was roughly half an hour overdue, growing increasingly shivery and cranky as the minutes ticked past. Finally, a bus trundled up to our stop, only to continue on, a Not in Service message on its LED screen.

Also, its wheels splattered several gallons of ice-cold slush all over us as the bus went by. (Okay, not quite, but it may as well have.)

I commented that, as a child, I tended to confuse the separate principles of the Golden Rule and Murphy’s Law. Let’s just say that my moral upbringing had its limits.

In fact, these two fundamental schools of thought could not be more different. The Golden Rule, the guideline to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is relatively optimistic, assuming the best of other people and situations. It’s like karma, at least in the Americanized, simplistic sense that I understand karma.

Murphy’s Law, on the other hand, pessimistically suggests that if anything can go wrong, it will, favoring chaos over karma. This law is scientifically proven, and has been used in the creation of a perpetual motion machine using toast-laden felines.

I’m not quite sure how this merging of philosophies would play itself out. Do the worst unto others, as they would do unto you? If anything can go wrong, it will to someone else. Then you. In writing, an appropriate scenario might be one in which you get published just before the magazine goes under, but not before the issue is released. Under Murphy’s Golden Rule, you are the publisher of this magazine.

Come to think of it, what is the point of all this?

I’ve been finding it incredibly difficult lately to write anything. It’s not a block, per se, or a lack of ideas. Now that I have all the time in the world–barring, of course, the minor inconveniences of a full-time job and the holiday season–and yet, I’ve done little but watch Battlestar Galactica and Monk, flip half-heartedly through the magazines strewn across my bedroom floor (without, you know, neatening them up or anything), and play online games of the escape-the-room genre to the point of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Now that I have no project to keep me occupied, I can’t work on the things I kept getting distracted by during the process. There’s even a sick part of my brain that’s tempted to go back to the thesis, if for no other reason than sheer familiarity. Talk about your Murphy’s Law.

Read the rest…

Tags:   Bridget · writingNo Comments