When I write

It feels so intermittent lately.  I can’t quite put my finger on why I can’t seem to gather my thoughts into a coherent blog entry.  But I have some ideas.

I love to write more than most anything.  Except for long walks with Todd or cuddling in bed on a rainy Sunday morning.  But even with those options, so many times I’ll sneak away and write for just a minute or two before I go back.  It’s just that strong.

But I hate it when it doesn’t feel inspired.  When it’s just me clunking along.  Without direction or guidance.  Because it falls flat, and I know it’s not right.  It’s so interesting how sometimes I’ll sit and write for maybe half an hour, make relatively few corrections/changes, and I’m done.  It just kind of slides out.  Effortlessly.   The ones I struggle with take so much longer.  And most of the time I start them and leave them in an abandoned file.  Not rotting, just resting.  For maybe months.  That intrigues me.

And so I pray.  As I do whenever I’m lacking.  For anything.  But sometimes the answer has been not now or wait.  Or nothing.  I hate those answers.  Because I ache to write something meaningful and powerful and inspiring.  But I can’t do that on my own.  And so sometimes I just have to give it time.

I’ve found the most effortless entries have been personal memories or feelings of my heart.  Because I don’t have to pretend to know anything; I just share what I’ve experienced or learned or observed.

I think in the past month I’ve been distracted.  I’ve started maybe a dozen.  Maybe more.  I have no idea.  But I feel unsettled.  Distanced from what I love.  Paralyzed and disjointed.  Uncertain of what I’m even thinking and feeling from one minute to the next.  And maybe it’s as simple as having had very little alone time.  Being gone nearly the entire time my family is with hardly a quiet afternoon or morning to just think.  It’s been an uncharacteristically busy season lately.  And so I’ve been pulling back.  A quiet weekend of early nights. I just didn’t have it in me to have friends over, when the kids asked why we weren’t.  Except then we did.  But more like a sister and nieces and nephews than anything else.  Maybe I’m just too tired for any other kind right now?  Burned out?  A slump of some kind for sure.

It’s not like I’m not interested in writing.  Or that I’ve used up all my ideas.  Or that I don’t yearn to spill my heart in a few paragraphs here and there.  That I don’t have memories I want to capture and save for my aging kids and brain.  It’s just that I can’t seem to concentrate and make sense of what I’m feeling at the moment.  Because it seems like I’ve been all over the map lately.

Nothing I can’t handle.  That is pushing me over the edge.  You understand.  You have foggy days and weeks of your own.  Just a little more to think about than usual.  So I’m doing what I can to carve out some quiet time for myself.  To calendar myself like I do the others.  But it’s interesting at the same time.  Because there’s little to go on when you cocoon yourself for too long.  Fodder for writing is found in the thick of things, of life as it’s happening.  At least the kind of writing I’m comfortable with.  I’m not a dreamer in most ways, so I don’t know how to conjure up a distant land with funny people.  All I know is what I’ve lived and seen.  And so I think there’s a balance of living and thinking.  Of aloneness and time with friends.  Of comfort and uncertainty.  I embrace it all.  Because I know it won’t last—the good or the bad.  There’s necessarily ebb and flow, periods of serving and times of self-reflection.  Stretches of calm and jolts of activity.  Just so happens I might be in the middle of it all at the same time so I’m not sure what to make of it.

But I’ve also learned that writing is not something to do after an event or feeling has elapsed.  It’s always more telling when you record of-the-moment feelings.  These are the most genuine, heart-felt entries.  One of the most cathartic ways of seeing what’s going on around you and in your heart.  So my journal has been out more than usual lately.  My old-slipper-friend who conceals the deepest yearnings and pains of my heart.  My most sublime joys.  The questions and wonderings of a hopeful soul.  The resolutions and answered prayers.  A kindred spirit friend.

So when I write, I might not finish the blog I start.  All I might have in me this week is a note to a friend or my family letter.  And not much more.  Other weeks I might write a few blogs one after another and have to save them to post later.  Another time I’ll sit.  Like this morning.  And try to write but with so much effort, plodding along, wondering if I was getting it right.  I knew in my heart I was struggling, and so I stopped.  And said a little prayer.  And opened a new page.

I don’t know if this is even for anyone but me, but it slipped out.  For now this is all I have, but maybe I’ll carve out some moments for quiet this week.  To be alone with my thoughts for a minute or two.  To catch up on what I love to do.  Because nothing makes me feel more alive and like me than when I write.