On the Flowing of the Juices

Don't be misled by the title of this post: it's not just more complaining about my neighbors' raucous sex. I'm making an effort to ignore them and not dignify their inconsideration by letting it seep into my daytime consciousness. Even if they have woken me at 4 a.m. twice this week. Even if one of those times, her screaming was so over-the-top, it made my cat growl.

Nope.

This post is about writing.

Turns out, I haven't written anything (except a few blog posts) in a month. That's pretty much unacceptable, though not entirely my fault. Life has been exceptionally demanding lately. I'm sure a more disciplined writer would have made time to write, but discipline is one of the things I struggle with, and forcing myself to sit down and stare at the computer monitor for the hour between finishing breakfast and leaving for my 11 a.m. shift at work is not going to magically turn me into a writing Jedi. But it might make me crazy. So instead I read a book. That's called caring for my mental health. It's important to me. And to Eric.

Shortly before I stopped writing, I started a new article for the website, on the inspiring topic of getting rid of crabgrass. Since my life has started to resettle into its natural rhythms and I'm trying to reclaim my writing routine (along with my eating routine, my exercise routine, and my cleaning routine), I've pulled that article back up a few times, fully intending to resume writing it. I've even placed the cursor on the next line to be written. Where it sat, blinking at me cheekily, until I realized I'd forgotten to look up who did the voice of the villain in Kung Fu Panda. (Ian McShane of Deadwood.) Which led me to spend all my writing time looking at pictures of celebrities online.

But today, I have nothing but writing time. And there's no way I can spend an entire day looking at pictures of celebrities. They just aren't that interesting. So I have to actually write. But suddenly, staring at that stupid cursor, it dawns on me that I don't know anything about crabgrass. Or the English language.

So I reread my notes. I feel like I know a little bit about crabgrass now, but I'm still stumped by the problem of forming thoughts into words and words into sentences. And the best way I know to solve that problem is blogging. So I blog. I blog long and hard and not very interestingly, I'm afraid. And it works, a little. I can feel the grease seeping in amidst my brain's moving parts. I think I might be able to write productively now.

Thank you (yes, you) for your help.