It. has been. a YEAR since I've sat down to write. From this side of my pen, that is. Writing projects, yes. Scripts for one-woman shows. A children's book. A 11-minute poem that I performed with the Milwaukee Ballet. Nothing to boo hoo about, at all. Except these words weren't, necessarily, for me. I might have etched five poems, but I would have stirred them in a workshop I was leading or supporting. Not sure if that counts as writing for myself.
When I started counting on my fingers, my eyes tracking absently across the ceiling, the math was incomprehensible. I thought of friends I'd giggled with about their comparable sex dry spells.
A year, girl? A whole year, like twelve months, back to back, f'real?
My bad, y'all.
In this past year, my best words were tiles for funding mosaics, grants and proposals, strategic plans, contract agreements and curricula, social media posts, text messages -sometimes a panel's worth, and eight trillion emails.
Eight.
At best, people tolerate a moderate number of words in an email. Save the extra ones, please, for when you sit down to write for yourself. Thankfully, in addition to discounts I don't use and newsletters I never have time to read, these eight trillion emails also deliver invitations to keynote. Travel confirmations to perform. Appreciation notes for facilitation or moderating. Access links to submission portals. Calendar confirmations and parking logistics.
Translate these damn metaphors and poetic instructions into bullet points. Please.
The tentacles of my inbox(es) has assaulted my free mind and time like a kraken. If my fingers hovered above letter keys without a deadline to beat or an appeal to revise, the unread messages whined like a tuning fork. Worse, were the groans of opened messages that had yet to receive replies with its schedule change confirmed or scan attached or clarifications satisfied... My fingers twitch, open the inbox for a <never> quick scan before I write. Ten minutes, ninety. I don't write.
The messages are only unwieldy, because they represent the work of an institution not an individual. They overwhelm me now --the individual-- because this work is prime to exist beyond the limitations of my isolation. I've spent the last year naming and renaming this truth: dedication, passion, sacrifice, solitude ... Isolation is what rings most true down here in the churn of this ocean whirlpool I've whipped about myself. Safe. Quiet. Rhythmic in its chaos.
Isolation. I will endeavor into this new year to untangle its subsequent habits of being, scale by scale, and letter by letter.
I challenged myself, too, that perhaps my writing drought is because of a fear or some anxiety. Perhaps a unconscious choice for soul-preserving celibacy, much like I'd decided my friends' sexlessness had been.
Nobody, girl?
Not even one rambling blog?
Over the centuries, fishermen were storied to sail their boats directly above the kraken, despite the possibility of being attacked by the beast or capsized by its wake. The anglers risked the threat because fish were plentiful wherever the kraken stilled.
Feeding my words to hungry fish in the new year... even if me and the monster have to throw down.
When I started counting on my fingers, my eyes tracking absently across the ceiling, the math was incomprehensible. I thought of friends I'd giggled with about their comparable sex dry spells.
A year, girl? A whole year, like twelve months, back to back, f'real?
My bad, y'all.
In this past year, my best words were tiles for funding mosaics, grants and proposals, strategic plans, contract agreements and curricula, social media posts, text messages -sometimes a panel's worth, and eight trillion emails.
Eight.
At best, people tolerate a moderate number of words in an email. Save the extra ones, please, for when you sit down to write for yourself. Thankfully, in addition to discounts I don't use and newsletters I never have time to read, these eight trillion emails also deliver invitations to keynote. Travel confirmations to perform. Appreciation notes for facilitation or moderating. Access links to submission portals. Calendar confirmations and parking logistics.
Translate these damn metaphors and poetic instructions into bullet points. Please.
The messages are only unwieldy, because they represent the work of an institution not an individual. They overwhelm me now --the individual-- because this work is prime to exist beyond the limitations of my isolation. I've spent the last year naming and renaming this truth: dedication, passion, sacrifice, solitude ... Isolation is what rings most true down here in the churn of this ocean whirlpool I've whipped about myself. Safe. Quiet. Rhythmic in its chaos.
Isolation. I will endeavor into this new year to untangle its subsequent habits of being, scale by scale, and letter by letter.
I challenged myself, too, that perhaps my writing drought is because of a fear or some anxiety. Perhaps a unconscious choice for soul-preserving celibacy, much like I'd decided my friends' sexlessness had been.Nobody, girl?
Not even one rambling blog?
Over the centuries, fishermen were storied to sail their boats directly above the kraken, despite the possibility of being attacked by the beast or capsized by its wake. The anglers risked the threat because fish were plentiful wherever the kraken stilled.
Feeding my words to hungry fish in the new year... even if me and the monster have to throw down.
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