Putting Toast on the Table

Finding ideas in the crumbs of my food and elsewhere.

I have around a shit ton of useless ideas every day. They can range in color and weight, but a shit ton is about the number. From career U-turns to song melodies to recipes I only have a third of the ingredients for, there’s no shortage of idiosyncrasies for me to hear out daily.

A virtual reality fishing game from the perspective of the fish? The goal being to eat as much worm as possible without getting hooked? I don’t know a thing about HTML, but, goddammit, I am about to.

I try to write down everything, no matter how stupid it seems at the time. Though I may never come back to it, it’s the fact that I could — if I wanted to — that matters; it’s the possibility that the idea and I have a future together.

To have an idea is to have your subconscious earn time and a half while your body does something completely different. Ideas can be spontaneous and they can be numerous. Too many can be overwhelming, like swimming in the deep end. But if some form of watery detritus pokes a hole in one of my floaties, I can’t rely on an abysmal backstroke to keep me from sinking. Generally, I just drown as I only graduated as a guppy in swim class at the Y.

It’s nearly impossible to keep calm when you’re unwillingly underwater; I’ve tried. If and when I find myself submerged in thoughts, I thrash around like any normal person who’s bad at swimming would. That is until it’s time to get out of the pool to eat.

I find solace in food; it’s a recurring checkpoint. When I talk about that day’s accomplishments, I often reference them based on how close they occurred to a meal. After lunch, during dessert, etc.

When there’s a morsel in my mouth, the only thing I’m forced to do is not choke and swallow. But like anything else, food can be a trigger for thoughts — good and bad. Something as simple as breakfast can send me down a rabbit hole that forces me to reevaluate my entire life.

For instance, if I take bites out of toast that vaguely resemble a side profile of a face, I’ll believe that I’ll soon have an illustrious career in sculpting toast. Copious scenarios play on loop as I meander up a figurative life-altering ladder as if I’d had already made such a bold effort in food-based art.

Whatever momentary door I decide to peep inside, that’s that day’s calling. In this particular mid-morning manifestation, I’m in toast. The internal dialogue about whatever career I decided on subsists until legitimate validations of that dummy occupation are exhausted, or until the over-easy eggs on my plate get cold.

I wish I were able to compartmentalize these ideas so that I could focus on the task at hand, that being yesterday’s game plan. Instead, I tend to justify my inability to follow through by taking on another half-baked project which really serves as an excuse for never finishing the first one.

What I’m saying is if I were to do something other than nothing about any of it, my life would be drastically different. But I don’t, so it’s not. Even if I owned guns, I can’t — in good conscience — promise I’d stick to them.

To misdiagnose me with ADHD is offensive to those who actually suffer, just as OCD has been thrown around to describe those who kind of dig organization. I’m just an unmotivated, motivated person.

While most ideas involve some form of me thinking they’re so great that I’ll remember without writing them down (like, say, a car that can honk in different directions), a slim percentage do make it to paper. I call this the Hieroglyphic Stage, followed by the What The Fuck Does This Say Stage, and finally the Trash Stage.

In the erratic Hieroglyphic Stage, my handwriting can only be described as written by a doctor — who never actually attended med school — who writes in a cryptic ancient language that even Robert Graysmith can’t crack the code to. These texts take the better part of a long weekend to decipher and, even then, are still in such profoundly broken English that any meaning of the text’s original intent is erased — thus, activating the What The Fuck Does This Say Stage.

The Trash Stage is self-explanatory but here’s a visual aid: think of a crumpled page with the words “Jon Lovitz meditation app called That’s the Ticket!” written on it. Now throw that in the place it belongs.

I can’t justly say that my persistence to do everything is all for naught; I’ve accumulated several area rugs worth of half-used notebooks that have furnished most of my apartments. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

I am also forgetful. If I don’t inscribe an idea on paper or retrace my footsteps back into the room I had the thought initially, I will lose it. I’m like Guy Pierce in Memento if he only had one Morse Code tattoo on his left wrist that reminded him about how much he regretted getting that tattoo.

Recently, I was told to choose one thing and stay the course, as if I had too many going on to commit to. I can’t argue with that; I’m confused now and again, though I’m sure being on the other end of the what do you think about this call can be even more taxing. But through my teetering ambitions, I have somehow nurtured years of odd employment. So much so that it’s difficult to assess if I’ve ever been on one particular career path at any point, ever.

I’ve washed cars; worked with cameras for the BBC; recorded and released four albums; assisted a Section 8 housing development; destroyed 50 years’ worth of child support records (on purpose); directed music videos for several Ohio bands; almost sold something I drew once; and I am still employed by the same fertility clinic after five years of coworkers asking me what I actually do there. And during all of this, I’m writing and filming my own stuff in hopes that I could maybe make a career out of something I actually like doing.

So, that said, what if my thing is to do everything all of the time? Who claims I have to be monogamous in my aspirations?

I’m a sponge who resets daily; I can’t help but find inspiration in it all.

When I watched Bo Burnham’s Inside, I bought a MIDI keyboard. When I read Allie Brosh’s book Hyperbole and a Half, I bought a digital drawing pad. When I see a cardboard box, I don’t just see a box — I see the possibilities of what that box can be other than its intended use.

Have an idea; have a couple. Creativity can be found in anything — from your couch cushions to the cosmos, and the gooey middle part in between. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Just the fact that you had an idea is proof that you’re alive. Allow the beauty of that to seep in and you will be rewarded.

Not long ago, I had an epiphany while eating a nectarine in the shower. I thought about all the things that went into my doing that: running hot water, the energy to stand up, enough disposable income to afford a seemingly luxurious fruit, etc. To eat while showering, I figured, is to tap into the carnal roots of our ancestors subsisting on a bloody carcass in the rain; the evidence of food on the face simply washes away. Maybe it’s just that food is truly my only constant, which explains why I’m enlivened by it.

You really can learn a lot by paying attention, by being in the moment. I know; gets thrown around a lot lately.

One day I will find the thing that inspires me to be uniquely myself. Then again, maybe I’m already there. At any rate, I’m content sifting through all the ideas I’ve collected thus far and will continue to peruse the crumbs of my breakfast for more.