Life comes at you quickly. Sure.

However, it also creeps along, molecule by molecule, seeps in quietly unbeknownst to you. Sometimes, before you know it, life has sucked your creative energy dry, and left you wordless.

The spark sparks up every now and again, but is snuffed out by ‘the life‘. By the slow creep of blah. By too much solitude. By a myriad of chaos monsters on the take. By the news, by the divisive for clicks, the media views, the absence, the longing for normalcy that somewhere seemed to get forever lost at some point during the pandemic.

And I’m still not sure why I lost it.

For me, it manifested as profound writer’s block. Just nada for over a year.

Now, I’ve written about this before, this writing block (ha ha) thang I’ve struggled with, but I might have found a… em… how do I express this… way of seeing it, I guess you could say.

Not done a lick really (‘cept this post) to cure it… but perhaps offer a new perspective.

See, in a way, writing can be kind of like a sport – let’s say hockey.

Ok, now hear me out. See, you must exercise the muscles, practice a lot. But, it is sometimes recommended you find other forms of training in order to preform at our best. You know, like hockey players taking dance lessons. Basically, I guess the idea is to learn how to use different muscles, and in turn bring OUT our best.

Practice, practice, practice.

So, maybe rather than seeing all this as a block, maybe I can look at it a different way, to see this time away as more of a training of another form.

I mean, I wrote every day, somewhere. I read things, had ideas about things. I saw things, felt things, but for some reason I just never felt this pull to write about them… instead I expressed myself in different ways.

I tended to my plants, logged the care & maintenance for a whole year now. Sure, went off on the odd twitter rant. Photos on Facebook of where I had been, what I’d seen, occasionally. But no poems, or essays, or letters to anyone.

Yet, still, I must say, I’ve longed to write. I’ve thought of it. I’ve imagined myself writing. Yet, yet… I guess I just didn’t feel the need to share it.

Yes, like the Hermit of the Tarot, was I.

Meaning: The Hermit suggests that you are in a phase of introspection where you are drawing your attention inwards and looking for answers within. You are in need of a period of inner reflection, away from the current demands of your position.

Turning within, looking at what lay at the core?

Maybe.

At the core… something I thought I’d tossed away… but maybe it had only got buried by… life?

See, I believe there are all sorts of different ways to look at things. Or, possibly there are a multitude of takeaways from life’s ups and downs, and even possible to learn to dredge meaning from the lowest lows. Different coping skills, or lessons learned, ways of seeing, ways of remembering, different ways of seeing the past.

I think it has a great deal to do with what stories we tell… both tell ourselves, and others. Realities we inhabit, and realities we avoid, realities we share with others. Ways of looking at our experiences, new ways of looking at the past and how we digest it. Again, what we CHOOSE to take from it.

What serves us?

Sort of a way of learning not to beat ourselves up, to try to take positive things even from the most divisive, horrible things. Not to be happy at tragedy, but rather to gain access to the strength that each of our experiences can give us.

Ok, so I’m going with that… for now… as I struggle to drag words out of me for this rotten National Blogging Month thang I’m failing miserably at.

Ugh… as ideas, thoughts, feelings, get stuck in the drain of what lies between my fingers and me brain, I find coping strategies that prompt me to go on.

Keep trying.

Ignore failure.

Just plow ahead.

Take the lessons of the past, and use them.

I guess.