It was pleasant to receive a call from the local newspaper's editor yesterday. He acknowledged a column submission I made, said he planned to run it tomorrow and went over a couple of glitches with me. He agreed to run a head-shot of my younger son, around whom the column was focused, and I sent him a jpeg.
But today, although I wrote the column last week and can't quite remember its structure or particulars, I feel grey and somehow out of gas. It's not just the whispering postpartum blues that go with completing almost any project. Grey is grey and it seems to cover the skies of 'writing' today.
Writing ... so what? Same shit, different day.
No doubt it will pass, but it hasn't passed yet.
When I put the pen down and go fishing, or work in the garden, or involve myself in a week or two of meditation-type retreat activity, I usually come back remewed and ready to write again. It's the same with all the various cycles, even the body's cycle of accumulation and then discharge. Right now for example I am juice fasting for the beginning of spring, to drop off the winter's excess and detox.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem comes when we get stuck in identification with some state or activity, fixating and clinging to it out of fear of change, and so crimp the natural flow of things. Thus, you get guys like Hemingway who blew his brains out because he couldn't get it up any longer (in the literary as well as physical sense). He was unwilling to accept that things change. If he was able to detach a bit and investigate his changes and life cycles, he might have found that he then would have had a whole new subject to write about, along with a renewed enthusiasm.
Uncle Bob, I will try to heed your words.
ReplyDeleteI for one would be forlorn if you stopped writing.
ReplyDeleteI just bet you would anon..
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Adam you are appreciated.