And Then…

I took a nap on my lunch break today. I’m not sure it really solved anything, but It’s made getting through this afternoon less of a trial compared to yesterday. So far, my prediction the week would drag by has been entirely accurate. I am still hopeful by the time Friday rolls around I’ll somehow be astonished it’s already here. But, I’m probably going to be more concerned about September starting.

I’m still grappling with some writer’s block, because exhaustion plus hormones is a powerful combination against anything resembling productivity.

A couple weeks ago (or maybe longer than that) I saw a TikTok from Elyse Myers about how someone asking “what’s your favorite song (or book or movie or whatever)” isn’t a quest for you to dive back through every catalogued memory you have and find the book/song/movie that’s your absolute favorite, and they’re going to know if you get it wrong; they just want to get to know you. This sort of thing often trips me up when it comes to answering writing prompts or responding coherently every time my wife and I have been drifting off to sleep and she’s asked me to tell her a story.

I used to think it was my mind going blank, but I’ve since reconsidered and it’s quite possible my brain is offering up every possible idea able to even passably fit under a prompt’s umbrella, and everything is so loud in my head, I’m not hearing anything.

I think the trouble I have with writer’s block is usually some part of me gets louder in those moments and rejects any ideas out of hand, even though there are probably some decent ones in the bunch. That loud part also seems to spend a lot of time focusing on how difficult (nay, impossible) it would be to write about something. Which, if you think about it, is a great way to just avoid doing any writing at all, because it’s so challenging and time consuming, and why would I want to spend my time writing something crappy when I want to be writing something brilliant and amazing?

The scary thing about doing Blaugust, and hitting publish on posts as a means to fill a quota, is I share things I otherwise wouldn’t. But, a lot of it, is content I don’t really find interesting or worthwhile. Lists of songs or TikTok creators aren’t the sorts of things I spend my time thinking about on a daily basis. Outside of meeting an arbitrary goal, will I continue to throw together words about these things? It seems unlikely.

This is where the writer’s block makes me stumble. Because it’s so easy to be overly critical about the worth of so many subjects. I keep thinking about my posts on certain topics as definitive statements, but that’s foolhardy considering how things can change, and my opinions certainly aren’t static. However, I don’t have it in me to circle around the same three thoughts week in and week out, at least not publicly. That’s the sort of thing I save for my Morning Pages, where I noodle on something sporadically for weeks at a time until I can finally make sense of it.

I’d like to write something humorous at some point. Whether it’s re-telling some ridiculous story or just sharing something fun and silly, but every time I try there’s a hollowness to it, at least there is from my perspective anyway. I’m not sure I’ve really nailed down the “comedy = tragedy + time” formula I’ve seen touted everywhere on the internet. Or maybe I’ve internalized it so well that I just can’t even retrace the steps it took to get there.

So, that’s where things sit right now. I think I’ve referred to Blaugust as a roller coaster a couple of times, but as we get to the end of the month, it’s entirely possible it was just the long, slow, climb at the beginning of the ride. This is the part where its almost to the top, but I can’t see when we’re going to make that plunge down the first big hill. That’s always the scariest part of a roller coaster to me. After that, everything is happening too fast to really worry about it. I find the concept of that intriguing, but also terribly frightening. I’m not sure that makes it any different than most elements in my life.