Inspiration Strikes

It has been thunder storming in Northeast Nebraska tonight. With this particular storm, not a whole lot of rain has come, but lots and lots of lightning flashed across the sky.

Lightning. The most spectacular part of a thunderstorm. Also the excuse my dad still gives me for reasons I shouldn't play in thunderstorms...

Tonight I went with my best friend from elementary school to see the movie "The Help." Fabulous. Go see this movie, seriously. Beautiful. I felt inspired after watching it, like I just wanted to go home and write and write and write. Posed quite the problem since we were an hour away from home.

Inspiration strikes me at the oddest times. Sure, I feel inspired after movies or books or plays, things that move me. But it also strikes after listening to a song, making spaghetti with my mom, drilling holes in walls, driving on country roads, in the middle of storms. It is often very sporadic, my inspiration.

Often my inspiration feels an awful lot like lightning. I never know where or when it's going to come, it is foolish to try and anticipate it. Inspiration flashes, so bright it lights up the night sky as if it were the middle of the afternoon, dancing across the sky in streaks of energy, then disappearing into the dark storm clouds.

Sometimes inspiration leaves all too early. It's here and then gone. Right now for instance, I have enough inspiration to write a blog post and then crash for the next 8 to 10 hours (don't judge me, I'm still on summer vacation...). I should really take advantage of it more when it does strike, prolong it somehow.

But maybe prolonging inspiration, trying to contain it, making it work for me instead of going with it, is like trying to anticipate lighting. Foolish. Perhaps it is better to just allow it to strike when it likes and take advantage of it while it still illuminates something that will soon fall into darkness again.

Until next time, find inspiration, let it illuminate if only for a moment.