It’s like I’ve forgotten how to write right now.

As with so many autobiographical things I say here on JALC (auto-blogographical?), that statement has a bit of hyperbole to it. In the workplace context, I am as verbose with the proposal-writing as I have ever been. (Which is a damn good thing, considering our deadline calendar for the summer.)

But I have not been writing anything in my out-of-work time. Nothing here, nothing on Will4Will, not even anything in my journal.

Not a good pattern.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m feeling specific ill-effects from this writing dry spell. I can look back to times in the past where I could feel the bile and stress of life building up without release, or to other times where my not-writing had a desperate flavor of denial and avoidance to it.

Neither of those old patterns seems to be in operation here. Life for the most part is GOOD these days. I’m never going to be the kind of smoke-blower to pretend that I am immune from stress or annoyance, but what bits of negativity I’ve been facing are most assuredly of the small variety. And my support network of friends and family has been deepened and enriched to allow me to deal with those negative blips and release them pretty quickly.

As for avoidance? Au contraire. I feel really lucky to know how MUCH there has been to experience, to process, and to learn from in these past few months. I have been trying to stay awake and pay attention in the midst of all of it.

Yet I do think that the learnings and blossoming from all of this could go deeper, could flower more fully, if I allowed myself the daily practice of putting words to paper once more. The sense has been strengthening and growing for a couple of weeks now.

I will also own that I had enough perfectionism running in the system that I spun myself around a few times, thinking about all the many different dimensions that have been opening up for me (marriage, relationship, creativity, body awareness, home, etc.) and trying to figure out which topic was most important to start with and how I could talk about that topic in some deeply insightful wrapped-with-a-bow kind of way.

So the self-inflected spin cycle kept me quiet for a bit longer, even as I was telling myself ever-more-insistently that I ought to start writing again.

And then I remembered what kind of writer I am.

Say it true, say it plain.

It’s almost like I’ve forgotten how to write right now. But I’m hoping to shift that momentum.

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Image credit: José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, Moça com Livro. Unaltered. Public domain.