Week ?? – Back to Life

Emotions

Depression remains under control. I guess I would say the anxiety and stress is coming back to this site after being away for a few weeks. Thankfully, the other parts of my life have settled down some so nothing else is contributing to those areas.

Significant Events

Hi. I know it’s been a little while since I posted here and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure why.

Yeah, things have been screwed up in a lot of different areas of my life and I could blame my absence on that. I’ve had some health issues, a negative reaction to my second COVID shot, plus getting used to working more hours like I have been lately. (Time sure does pass differently when you’re working 40 versus 24 hours a week.)

But if I tried blaming outside stuff for not posting here, I’d only be making excuses and I promised that I would be honest – at least with myself – about everything that I do here.

For the most part, I’ve been avoiding this because of what I did the last time I blogged: I ended up writing my five-part opus detailing the high points of my life’s trauma. (Sure, there’s plenty more that I left out, but I think you get the idea if you’ve read it.)

Am I sorry that I wrote it? No – not at all. If I was, I would have deleted it and pretended it never happened.

No, I would not take it back. At the time, these feelings were bubbling inside like a volcano getting ready to explode and they were going to come out one way or another. I began to write and it just kept on coming. I’ll be honest and say that I was somewhat taken aback that things came together here so quickly – I thought I’d be able to go a year or so before I got into the core of everything. Instead, it was only a couple of months. I thought ok – I can live with it. Let’s get things out of the way to clear space for what’s coming after.

Instead, when everything was written and posted, this silence reigned inside.

I shouldn’t have really been surprised. I had just watched Lauren Sapala’s second episode of her Intuitive Writing video course and she described this process as writing when you’re “full” until you are “empty” and then you wait while you fill up again without forcing anything. (I’ll write more about this lesson in the next day or two.)

When I started, I was very full and it just kept coming and coming. Even if I had wanted to spread this out over several weeks, it wouldn’t wait – these posts just had to come out. And when I had wrapped up the last of the five, I was totally empty. All I could do was wait for the next piece to show up inside.

I waited. And I waited. And nothing came.

Then, about 3 weeks ago, I started to get the “itch” again – something was wanting to come out. But I kept finding excuses to ignore it.

Whereas I was doing most of my blog writing while I was at work during my down times, now I was wasting the hours doing everything I could not to continue. And my novel? Pretty much the same thing happened.

(I won’t say that it was a total waste of time – it’s like things inside my head suddenly changed and I was now adrift trying to figure out where I was at. For instance, I now saw that few of the images I had chosen for my characters really fit the story in my head any more. I ended up choosing new ones for just about everyone. Then I started getting new ideas about what the story needed to be and who should really be involved.

It’s like everything that I was working on concerning the story wasn’t really about the story at all – it was about me dealing with my life and my past. Yeah, I know I’ve already said this multiple times, but for some reason saying it now felt different – more real. Now, with my personal history out of they way, I could look at this novel’s story in a different light and see everyone in new ways.)

Thus, I’ve been trying to set myself aright after being knocked over by these new ideas. I think I’m at a decent place now and can continue on again.

There’s also some hesitancy – like I’m having to build my courage up for the next leg of the journey. Part of me is afraid of reactions to what I’ve written in the past and what I will write in the future. Part of me is feeling a little bruised still emotionally. And there’s this embarrassment about making all these decisions when I first started this blog about my process and now 2 months later, everything has changed.

Anyway, things will work out. If I’m honest with myself, I can almost bet that the things that are “set in stone” at this moment will be completely fluid a couple months from now. And I’m trying to be ok with that. Sure, it’s frustrating as hell to keep going through this. And it would be nice to actually write a novel during this process. But as long as I feel I’m making progress in my own life with my depression and anxiety, I will be just as happy.

So I’m back now and ready to continue on with things. And I hope you continue on with me.