Rough Starts
Flushing out ideas to make them interesting enough to share
Start writing…
That is the prompt here before I begin drafting. If only it was that easy. I am having what feels like a legitimate case of writer’s block. So boring and cliché that seems silly to even mention it. I sat with my computer every day this week and have been met with nothing but blank pages and unfinished thoughts. Tried with paper and pen and can’t get so much as a doodle.
Yet, I have pages and pages of notes and thoughts and half-finished drafts of things I want to write about, things that I want to work through and smooth out for myself, ideas that I genuinely think are worth sharing. I had at least three conversations this week alone where something was said, and after which my conversation-partner noted it would make for a good essay.
I have psuedo-started each one of them. And then no more words came. So I started doing some research on said subject to either give me better context or help fill in the gaps. Still amounted to nothing more than copy/paste for notes, and nary an original word or edited phrase to come.
So here we are. Past my internal deadline of at minimum one essay a week and I have written nothing. I could skip today and many likely wouldn’t notice. I could maybe clean-up one of the topics I have been wanting to write about and not feel great about it, but hit publish.
I could continue what I am doing here, write about not being able to write just so I am seeing keys move and words appear on screen. Simply an internal exercise to push through.
Maybe I can add a moral to this about showing up when we don’t want to. Doing “hard things.” This is not actually hard - even if it feels very hard and very foolish. One of the things I want to write about is how we need to ask more favors of each other, small inconveniences to better foster community in an do-it-yourself era. A time where it is either easier or just we feel it is necessary to do it ourselves. That topic is coming, but maybe first I needed to do the favor to myself and simply show-up and try for no one but me. That there is always something there, even when it feels like nothing.
Happy Easter if you celebrate! xx
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