I had great hopes to be more productive these past few months. There are at least a dozen poem fragments and story ideas gathering digital dust in my Google drive; there’s been numerous hours spent poking at my unresponsive keyboard while staring out the window; and various ultimatums abandoned for shiny distractions. In short… I’m stuck. What has in the past felt easy and abundant, now feels soulless, unsatisfying and trite. The words just aren’t coming, the ideas feel thin, and my ‘self’ doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. I don’t know whether it is just the seasonal rainy-coast blues, or a deeper malaise, but my desire to write has been dampened, even drowned. And in that gap of unproductivity, my confidence has flatlined to the point where I fear I’ve deleted more than I’ve documented to save myself from perceived ridicule.
So what’s a writer to do when the flow has flown? Please know this is a rhetorical question… there is nothing I like less than self-help books and overly earnest advice. I know that one path is to literally keep writing, without edit, without purpose, even if it is a badly-disguised journal entry such as this sad missive. We learned that trick in Mr. Reid’s high school Journalism class, while listening to Bruce Cockburn and feeling oh-so-grown-up in the glimmer of independent thought he afforded us. Back then I imagined myself growing up to be a journalist — a finger on the pulse of the important issues of the day; or a magazine editor — dispatching assignments and curating cool like Vogue’s Anna Wintour (but, you know, nicer!)
Instead, I plan to utilize the same diagnostic tool I’m told to begin with every time my “tech support guy” comes to my aid for my frequent and notoriously bad technology karma… Have you cycled the power? Ha. And, what’s so irritating is that most times, that’s all it takes. Therefore, I’m going to shut down, cycle the power, and reboot in the new year.
So, on the edge of the holiday season, in the midst of yet another pelting rainstorm, and with this blog post to the void, I hear a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall… and proclaim, in my best Friedrich voice: “Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu” (c’mon, it’s the holidays so there’s definitely going to be a Sound of Music reference involved.)
In fact I think Gretl says it best:
[GRETL]
The sun has gone
To bed and so must I
[ALL CHILDREN]
So long, farewell
Auf Wiederseh’n, goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
[GUESTS]
Goodbye
