Month: May 2022

It’s been almost two months since I’ve added to my blog/website. The last time I sat down to write in my studio, I struggled to stay awake, and making myself focus on putting words on a page was actually psychically painful.

But being away from writing, from what I know I love despite having trouble connecting with it, must be temporary – I can’t let it get stuck in my mind as “the way I am now”.

After I get physically sick, I love the feeling of getting better, even more than just feeling good in the first place. The contrast between nonfunctional misery with slow-moving contentment is so delicious.

With migraines, I’ve been lying in my bed, crying from head/body pain, nauseous and miserable. When I’m finally able to walk without feeling like I might faint or throw up, I feel so elated and free. At first I only take a couple of steps before I have to stop and catch my breath, but compared to the state of incapacity I had been in, those two steps feel like flying.

But when I go through a period of not writing, instead of feeling good about starting to move again, I spend a lot of time kicking myself for being down in the first place, for not moving with vigor and strength.

Why can’t I give myself grace to ease back into writing the same way I recover from an illness? Instead of feeling joy at tiny signs of recovering, my inner critic says mean things to me, like, “What’s the point?” “You call this writing?” Instead of looking at just enjoying the sweet existence of words, just being with them, even if I’m not crafting them into clever and inciteful poems and stories, I am writing.

It’s time to quit telling myself that whatever sickness or glitch I experienced is the “new normal” and that efforts to write well are in vain.

The rain has stopped. Clouds are parting. Words are settling themselves down into sentences, at my request.

And I am easing into writing again.