The Problem of Being

The longer I’ve gone the harder it has gotten to write anything. I sit in therapy and shrug off the trauma and the feelings and wish to reawaken the creative muses who no longer sing for me. It’s not that I am having writer’s block, I am full of ideas that fill my head to the rim while I try to fall asleep, but I find myself unable to sit down and just write, draw, paint, or do anything creative and it is killing me.

As a child, I thought I would grow up to be an artist or a writer. I was always drawn to the bohemians that smoked cigarettes painted into the night or slumped over a typewriter. I grew up filling up notebooks with doodles and poems thinking of the day I published a novel or had my art up at a gallery.

I moved across the country and bought a house with my spouse and we have a dog and a yard and all the other dreams I ever had have come true. I know how to cook delicious meals, I live in a great city near the sea. I am joining communities and seem to be making friends. 

I have redone my office a few times to make it more creative-friendly. I’ve kept my computer in the office, next to my bed, and even downstairs in hopes that I will open it and start typing a blog, a short story, a chapter of a novel, a poem, or just anything. Instead, I watch TV, play video games, or just stare at my phone like it’s going to be interesting again. Sometimes Nicole goes off to Boston or hangs out with people and I have the whole house to myself. I think I’m going to start one of these projects that sit in my cranium screaming at me, but then I’m flicking through the different streaming services to find something to watch.

Is it a fear of not doing a good job? Am I so scared of making things that might not be enjoyed? Am I scared of success? Something stops me from fully committing to a creative pursuit. I always feel like there’s not enough time, or I need more rest, or the job is so soul-sucking that I have nothing left to give. 

I have a whole Tarot book and mostly finished Tarot cards sitting there collecting dust in my mind that need to be finished up. I said I would finish them and get them published right after I moved to Providence, but I have spent so little time on them. I have given up on them at this point and even started thinking about redrawing them all again, but that would require doing something.

I have several unfinished blogs that I never post because I think they’re dumb. I get the small motivation to sit down to write something and then I’m two to three paragraphs in and think, this is so dumb, no one will like this, but that hasn’t happened in almost a year. Now I don’t even try to write anything at all.

My therapist suggested I try to pick up something I never tried before to see if learning something new would unclog the blockage. While it seems like a fine idea, it’s not the ideas that are being blocked, it’s the willingness to even try. I have ideas circling in my mind all the time. I have novels, poems, comic books, paintings, songs, short stories, zines, albums, and role-playing adventures all fighting for dominance in my head. If one takes over for a while I find some crazy idea why I can’t do it at all. Mostly I can’t do it well enough.

While at work, sometimes I have some time to pursue blogs on how to be creative. The secret is all the same, just do it! I find myself in this position a lot, If I can just do it, I wouldn’t have any issues anymore, but alas, I can’t just do it. 

The truth is there is a commitment to allowing my brain to not be distracted and focused, and nowadays that is scary. The idea of just being is horrifying. Looking at that blank piece of paper like it is the abyss staring back, all I would have is my thoughts and fears, and that is scary to me. I turn to my phone, the TV, the XBOX, music, books, or anything that will keep my head from landing squarely in right now. 

To be creative is to be in now, at least for me. Right now, as I write this, I am present in myself and I am thinking about this struggle, and my mind is trying to make me go to another tab and check out ESPN or Twitter or anything else but typing this blog. 

It would be easy to just get a dump phone, and get rid of the TV and the XBOX, but there is always something to distract. I have read a lot of Nicole’s body and hair products bottles while in the bathroom because I forgot my phone. I am more interested in the ingredients of a lotion than being present in my head and just being.

I use a mindfulness app called Healthy Minds. Today it talked about how sometimes the best thing to do is nothing and to just be. To sit there and do nothing. No distractions, no talking, no moving around, just be. 

I at first felt superior to most people because here I am listening to my meditation app about just being as if I am the only one who has the power to stare at a wall and be fine, and before the options for distractions were this numerous, I could, but then it dawned on me that I can’t just be. My mind won’t let me. It fears that more than anything at this point. 

I think a lot about being in chemo and the surgery I had for cancer and how terrible being in the now was. I couldn’t escape just being because of the pain and the fog of the chemicals coursing through my body. I couldn’t read a book without realizing that nothing was being comprehended. I was staring at the TV, but I wasn’t seeing anything, I was deep inside myself drowning in my own body. I couldn’t escape the now for the past or the future, and I could not be distracted at all. 

It took a long time before I started being able to be distracted again. I could read and know what I was reading. I could watch a show and know what’s going on in the show. My mind could finally drift out of my body and be numbed by stories and pictures again. It made me want to consume so much more than I ever had before, and what luck! The world is giving more to consume than ever before. 

When I was young and drawing and writing weird things, it was because I was bored. I have no idea how to be bored anymore. I have all the tools to keep me from being bored. I always have something to watch, read, or play. When do I have time to create when there is so much to consume?

I don’t know if I can say this without sounding dramatic, but I need to create or I have no idea what the point of anything is. 

I am hoping by writing this as fast as I can and posting it, I will feel obligated to go forward and create more. I have no other reason to do it. I don’t make money off of it, I won’t be famous for any of it, but I just need to put things out into the world and hope that someone feels a connection to it.