wine and cheap perfume

Here i am, like three years later, writing in this blog again. i used to have many (aka 2) devoted readers, and now i'm back. this is, i figure, a nice place to visit when i'm ravaged with writer's block, and need to take a break from the blank screens that do major damage to my writer ego and convince myself that even writing something, in a mid-2000s blog, can do wonders for the spirit. Or so I'd like to think.
I am in San Francisco, visiting my boyfriend, escaping the New York cold, and exploring a city that I've always been curious about and romanticized, but have never really given a chance. I lived here briefly with Annie the fall/winter of '04/'05, but she was always drunk and I was criminally depressed, so that doesn't really count. Doing ecstasy at a half dozen terrible Castro gay bars doesn't really count as becoming acquainted with a new place.
Everyone here is gay. Every restaurant is green/organic/local. There's a coffee or thrift store on every corner. It is, in a word, delightful. Last night Rocco and I went to a seedy bowling alley/karaoke joint, filled with jovial drunkards in stained jeans, santa hats, and jingle bell necklaces. The KJ sang the star spangled banner at one point, karaoke, and that was the only moment where I was like, "No thanks." The rest of it was perfect. I sang the Shirelle's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," which I realized is a really monotonous, passive and lame song (though revolutionary in its content in the era it came out, I recognize). And then I sang Michael Bolton's "How Can We Be Lovers," and realized that it is kind of the ultimate karaoke power ballad. Rocco sang Roy Orbison's "Crying," which had all the locals slow dancing up a brandy-fueled storm, Mariah Carey's "Vision of Love," which had all the locals cringing, and Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River," which had all the locals leaving. Then we bowled terribly and I threw 19 gutter balls and two strikes. It's kind of like how I am in life-- nothing in between. Now I find myself, after recently becoming obsessed with Glee, with giving all the best Chrismas presents to the people I love. I want to make them all. I've realized that there is nothing more gratifying than making things. I want to make bread and jam and necklaces and dolls. For some reason I turn into Martha Stewart this time of year. Anything to avoid the doldrums of self-pity, boredom, emptiness, feelings of doom and impending failure. I'm thirty and lost. I know I want to write, because when I've written something I deem worthwhile, something that other people seem to get something from, that they can relate to that either makes them laugh or feel something, it is hands down the most gratifying experience in the whole world. So the question remains-- why am I having such a hard time doing so? Why do I feel like I suddenly have nothing to say? Or that I do have a lot to say, but very little on each topic, just a brief, weird collection of inconsequential thoughts? Why am I so scatterbrained? It used to be that I would just attribute it to fear, to cranking out nothing but mediocrity, but now I realize that it's just some sort of weird comfort/discomfort I've settled into, concluding that I'm not a particularly critical, deep, or interesting thinker. How is it possible that in the throes of a winter depression, living with a girlfriend who couldn't have inspired me less, feeling guilty that I was neglecting the majority of my grad school work, I was generating more and better quality work than ever before? In retrospect, that was the only time in my life when I was an actual writer. I was consumed with thoughts about writing, about language, ideas were constantly popping into my head about topics to write about. Is it possible that I've depleted my idea bank? How is that possible. Is it that I'm dating someone seriously who is hyper-vigilant and critical and I feel like if I write about anything personal or romantic that I'll have to bear the scope of his wrath? Or is that yet another excuse? It seems cheap and sad to only write about things and experiences in an exploitative, two-dimensional way, where the people discussed are reduced to cartoons, and I'm the normal, down-to-earth, enticingly self-aware protagonist. Am I such a narcissist that I can only write about myself now? Or is that more honest? I can't tell. I can't write about things that I feign interest in. I mean, once I get the ball rolling I suppose I could cultivate an interest in them. I just feel like the laboriousness, and joylessness I feel in regards to getting to that place will alienate and bore readers, and I've always prided myself on grabbing them with a great opening and never letting go.
So now, in my bank of ideas, here what is on my plate: snobbery that is unique to new yorkers. Why/how it thrives as other cities expand and become culturally richer. The shame inherent in being an active person in the queer community who grew up moneyed, and removed from those who grew up impoverished.