There’s A Block On The Road

And how to get out from under it.

Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer at LACMA

I used to be a good writer. I don’t know if I really am these days. Sometimes I’m just not so sure. Before it was easy for me to let myself get carried away on a melodic sort of thought or the rhythm of words and feelings coursing within me. I could dig in, get dirty, allow myself to feel their weight as I wandered through the words dizzily floating in my head. I was expertly attuned to figuring out which ones made sense, evoked feeling, maybe made you laugh. I could furrow a brow from a distance, give people a chuckle or a cry.

These past few weeks have been crazy-making.

It’s as if I’ve lost my sense of smell. Sure, I can see, hear, touch, and sort of taste what I’m eating, but a major component of one’s enjoyment simply isn’t there. The nuances are lost, all that’s left is sweet, sour, and salt. Which I suppose is fine, but it doesn’t feel like enough. That extra-sensory thing is missing.

Writing these days feels like such a slog these days, a dreaded dance with potential disappointment. My abilities to be funny or evocative in some way feel waning, distracted by the low (or sometimes, high)-grade anxiety we’re all feeling in the moment, coupled with my own life worries and heightened states of anxiety and depression thanks to PTSD and bipolar 2. It is hard right now, to be creative and inventive, when it all feels so hard and at times so very inconsequential. For everyone.

But also.

I know writing is important, that creating right now is vital. For myself and for the people who need it. Not need my writing per se, but need writing in general, need the creative genius or even just attempts of others to help better understand their souls, and those of the world around them. All of the creative arts are important right now: to soothe, explain, to help minds and souls escape. To feel seen or beloved, or get in their feelings and really feel them, as we all should be allowed to do. To constructively work through any negative or cognitively dissonant voices, thoughts, and feelings — to give flight to the power of your self and your own thinking. Being creative and writing gives a voice to all, even in the most personal of experiences. So many things are beautiful lessons.