Slim Jim Stallone and the Big Blue Box

Friday, August 14th, 2009 | Posted by: Eddie Wright

So I’m moving from NJ to San Francisco.

I decided I wanted to simplify. I wanted to dump possessions - DVDs, books, CDs, everything. I sold, I recycled, I gave away, I chucked. Before this major move became a definite thing, I was an accumulator. A big, fat, geeky accumulator.  Along with the DVDs and books and music I had action figures and posters and silly memorabilia and all the typical big, fat, sci-fi, horror, geeky accumulator things that big, fat, sci-fi, horror geeks accumulate. Some decisions were tough, some were easy, but I eventually conquered the stuff and simplified and streamlined. Now I’m happy as shit. Stuff sucks. Excess sucks. I Alexander Supertramped like a bastard and now I feel like a lean and mean Slim Jim-looking Sly Stallone from Rocky IV.

Except for one thing.

There’s this box.

A big blue box.

A big blue box of random ideas and notes and old notebooks and humiliating song lyrics written when I was sixteen and drawings and newspaper clippings and other obsessive, not-totally-unlike-Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac collection of random ridiculousness. I simply cannot dispose of anything from this big blue box of possible potential. I can’t do it! I won’t do it! I refuse to do it!

This shit could be gold!

There’s no way to know if one of those weird little jots could kickstart the noodle and get things going and lead to something special. There’s just no way to know unless I periodically take a peek. If I get rusty, one of those things could be the WD-40. There’s no such thing as writer’s block if I’ve got a big blue box of dynamite to potentially blast my way into new creative territory. Right?

Sure it’s a lot of garbage. Sure a lot of it doesn’t make sense. Sure it takes up space. Sure some of it was written when I was a wise-ass, clueless little highschooler but what the fuck? There’s no way to know. Amongst the chaos I found a worksheet from a literature class with a scribble on it that said, “The girl’s name should be Bonnie.”

There’s just no way to know when the old stuff comes in handy.

Be a “green” writer. Nothing goes to waste. Even the bad shit can lead to the good shit.