What Should It Be?

In keeping with my Number 1 New Year's resolution, I've begun writing my book. Here's what it's about:

Parenting. I'm an expert on this subject as I've both been parented and parented myself. Except the more I stop to think about this subject the more I realize I don't know doodle about parenting and my mother is nuts. The kids are always arguing with one another, except when they're crying or subdued in front of the t.v. My mother is alternately driving me bananas or not speaking to me. And me? I'm so overwhelmed with the urge to run screaming into the streets that I've literally begun to map out a route where the fewest people I know will see me as I flap madly from the house and away my roles as parent and daughter. Maybe this is the wrong topic.

Maybe marriage. Marriage is good. I know alot about marriage having observed many and been part of one for more than 10 years now. I have plenty to say on this subject, in fact. Marriage is meaningful, spiritual; it serves as a model upon which larger mergers can be based. On some days, it even serves a broader purpose, explaining things like the lack of peace between Israel and Palestine. Because the truth is no matter how much you love someone they can only chew plastic in your ear so many times before you are driven completely mad. So how can we expect countries that already don't get along to sit next to each other on the world's couch and watch t.v. in peace?? We can't. They each need their own space and their own tv's. Except there's no cable in the bedroom! So you see, peace is impossible! On second thought, maybe marriage isn't the subject for me after all.

However, it's given me the idea that maybe global politics is the right thing. I've toyed with this thought before but have always assumed there were people way smarter than me expounding on the topic and I'd have a hard time competing. The last fifteen of my adult years have driven me to the other end of the thought spectrum on this subject. Now I believe only morons are involved in the global political scene, otherwise we would've knocked out a few more deliverables by now. We've shifted pollution from venue to venue without solution, we've allowed millions and millions of people to starve or be sick to death without batting a global lash and we still can't get potable water to the whole world when something like 80% of the world is water? Yeah. Some real sharpies in charge of the ship. What a mess! I swear some days the only way to handle the thing would be to send everyone to their collective rooms and clean the whole damn world by myself. But then they'd just mess it all back up again and make me even more furious. (I've seen this play out before, smaller scale.) I'm getting heated just thinking about it. Can you title a book 'All of You are Idiots'? Mabye not.

I have to think about something that makes me happy so the book can be cheerful and uplifting. Something catchy. With a beat. So you can dance to it.

I know! The book'll be about being a Chicagoan. No, I'm mad at Chicago now because of the Olympics. So I'll write about patriotism. I'm a patriot! No, I'm mad at patriots because the good ones are either dead or too quiet and the false ones are idiots getting paid to be on Fox News. I'll write about dieting. If there's one thing I can make light of it's dieting! Except I'm on one now so that'd make me a hypocrite. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's a hypocrite. Uhhh, cooking? No. That'll make me hungry. What the heck do people write books about? Maybe I'm not meant to write after all. I don't have a damn good thing to say about anything. I'm the author-equivalent to eggplant for crissakes! I just lay there like an oddly-shaped purple mass and don't say a damn thing. How am I supposed to do something I've resolved to do when starting it is so mind-numbingly impossible?

You see, this is the problem. I write all the time. I just don't write about anything. I'm the Seinfeld premise in written form. I write about nothing.

And there it is. I'm going to write a book about nothing.

Wish me luck.