ESSAY-BREAKFAST

So, let’s see…what to write about this morning. What to write about.

At the moment, I have no ideas. This is common for me. Let’s see if I can come up with one.

Nope, nothing at the moment. Look, if you’re one of the noble people, all two or three of them, who is good enough to read this every day, you know that if I’m going to post something every day, there will be days where I can’t think of anything to post. This is just an attempt by me to show, to all creative folks, that on some days, you do what you do, and the inspiration just isn’t there.

So okay, let me try some writing prompts. I went to a web site (http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/), and it listed 365 of them. Let’s see…

Okay, one of them suggests writing about what you had for breakfast. That’s easy. Breakfast this morning, so far, has been coffee and cigarettes.

There have been many mornings, too many for me to write about, that this has been my breakfast. Most of the time, it’s a bowl of Cheerios or oatmeal.

I realize that I should eat something. But somehow, when I’m just sitting there, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, it seems like the perfect breakfast.

I’ll stop right now and say that I know that these prompts are about creating fiction, not essays such as this one. But now that I’m writing about breakfast, I may as well go on.

When I was a kid, I often ate breakfast with my cat. I would set up my cereal, and then put milk in a small bowl, which I would then set on the kitchen table, in front of a chair to my right. My cat would jump on the chair, and, keeping her hind legs on the chair, would put her front paws on the table, and start drinking her milk.

I wish someone had taken a picture of this.

Later on, when I went to college, I was fortunate enough to live in a dorm that had a kitchen coop. You could order anything you wanted, and student workers would cook it to order. That was pretty awesome.

I suppose I could write something about how my breakfasts reflect assorted phases of my life. As a kid, my cat was my confidante, and my breakfast with her was a reminder that my home could be a place of love and support. Then, when I was at college, with its vast sea of youthful opportunity, I could have anything I wanted.

My breakfast of Cheerios makes me think of my spartan new life as a recently divorced person. My funds are limited, and I buy huge boxes of Cheerios and Quaker Oats from Costco. Eventually, when I am out of debt, I will venture out into other territory, but for now, these two things are my staples.

Perhaps my occasional breakfast of coffee and cigarettes is another sort of phase in my life. I write a lot now, and though horribly unhealthy (quitting smoking is a prime New Year’s resolution), there’s just something so appropriate about it as a writer’s breakfast. Get up, grab a coffee and smoke, and get writing; images of a reporter working on a deadline abound.

This gets me to thinking about how I could get ideas for characters based on what they had for breakfast. There are some people who, no doubt, have high maintenance breakfasts each morning, such as Eggs Benedict. There is a vast difference between having someone cook this for you, and cooking it yourself (that kitchen in my college days, after all, prepared eggs any way except poached, which is time consuming and utterly impossible for a line cook dealing with countless orders).

I imagine what it would be like to set my cigarettes aside, and, one morning, take the time to cook myself Eggs Benedict. Rest easy, I’d be saying to myself, I’m going to take care of you. Yes, I’d say, your new life has its hardships, but let me remind you that there’s someone here you can count on; enjoy a luxury breakfast, on me.
This gets me to thinking about how one of my New Year’s resolutions is not just to take care of myself (read: stop smoking), but also to keep looking out for myself. This guy Derek is facing the challenge of living life alone in his apartment, I say, and he’s a good guy. Look out for him, and make sure he gets a decent breakfast, for goodness sake.

So that is how I do it. I take something, and write about it.

It doesn’t need to be fiction, at first. It can just start out as a musing about that thing I decided to write about. Now, though, I understand why method actors muse about what their character had for breakfast; a character who has a breakfast of coffee and cigarettes is, after all, far different from a character who has Eggs Benedict for breakfast, and I’m sure the conversations between the two of them would be mighty interesting.
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I must go now. Yes, the coffee and cigarettes were good, but I’d like to have something a bit more substantial.