It is Tiring Being Here
I get tired sometimes of writing about how hard it can be to write. In lockdown my plan was to generate at such a furious pace that I'd make up for all the lost years (basically the last 23 years post-college). I'd finally get out of my introspective shell and make things that would distinguish me from just a family-type person that works and gets a paycheck.
Little did I know that the oppressive weight of the last seven months would cripple my hands and feeble my mind. I could make interesting meals and make excuses for the junk food, but I found something as simple as reading for a few minutes a day to be a significant test of my attention span. I was in this push/pull between endless doom scrolling and forced bouts of stressful mindfulness.
Then summer started and things started to open up a bit. Not for real open, but the outdoors became a possibility. We were learning that we probably didn’t need to take every outside package and product through a Silkwood shower before we openly allowed the kids to eat the Mac & Cheese. The sun came out. I started reading again, getting interested in things other than what was on a small screen in front of me or splashing around the bottom of a bottle.
I started to go the other way, though - to roadmap a ton of projects that were going to lift me out this deep valley that I’d tumbled into a few months prior. It was not long before I was paralyzed by the unlimited opportunity. Circle back to despair.
So, now I’ve been taking the last few weeks to outline some of the things I want to focus on. Drawing. Some writing. Bringing them together in one form or another. It is going to be a long dark winter, so targeting outcomes now will save me the stresses of never finishing anything down the cold road.