I usually have a clearer idea of what I'm doing with these posts.
For the last year, I have had a steady stream of inspirations. Things that I felt passionate about. Things that I compelled me. Things that flowed onto the proverbial page effortlessly. And I suppose it's not that surprising that after a year, that the ink well ran dry.
But I also don't believe in writer's block. I don't believe in mental inhibition preventing me from getting words out.
I do believe in the fact that sometimes we are afraid that the words we do manage to wrench out of our soul are some how not good enough and I also have talked about that constantly. Hell, I talked about that last week.
I guess repetition is on my mind again. Is always on my mind. The endless echo. The resounding reverb. The "if not this, then what." Conditionals in context. Everything in context. Every piece a gear in a clock. Every moment contributing to something greater than itself.
I have been thinking a lot about the fact that I start a lot of these posts with the phrase "I have been thinking a lot about." I have spent countless hours on this metacognition, on this near borderline obsession of how I think versus how other people think. How the way we think informs how we approach problems.
And sometimes problems have easy solutions. And sometimes problems have no solutions. And it's wild to imagine that there are questions that we don't get answers to, but that is also the nature of existing in an imprecise world with imprecise language.
I'm writing on Sunday, November 2nd. This is the latest I have ever done one of this video post scripts (which is to [video post] script and not [video] post script), because usually I have a reserve a stockpile.
The Mountain Goats song from last week is still rounding in my head.
"The first thing you learn is how far you can go with no gas in the tank."
But the funny thing it is, it's not that I don't have lack a fuel. It's that I don't know what needs to be fed. The intrusive thought from last October won. I am making a zine a day every day in November.
I have words and thoughts and notes and aspirations, and truly, writer's block is the inability to put words on the page, but the overwhelming sense of overflow that’s causing this blockage. The mind going a million miles a minute.
Yes I am editing this live.
I haven't been sleeping well this week. I won't go into the reasons why, although I will call out the fact that clock shift from daylight savings time may have accidentally realigned my sleep schedule into something more usable than the last few months have been.
My thoughts aren't quiet things. They are rain drops and matchsticks and bottle clinking. They are the clatter of keys and the dull hum of electronics. They are abacus beads and gears grinding and gears relaxing.
The point of doing a thing regularly is not necessarily to get better at it.
I think that does happen as a byproduct, but the point of doing a thing regularly is that you don't forget how to. It's so easy to forget. It's so easy to get complacent. So I am writing this incoherent stream of thought because it's important to not to get complacent.
No one is making me do any of this. I don't have to post. I also don't have to record a video of this.
But I'm going to. I am.
For no other reason that maybe this will resonate. Maybe this connects with someone. Maybe this will be in service of something else.
For all of the "I'm not sure if what I'll ever do is enough" in those staccato of raindrop thoughts there is a loud chorus of "what I do matters."
Everything in service of the next thing.
We make and fill space.
We do good. Or at least, we try to do good. I'm not sure it's enough. I'm not sure it'll ever been enough. But that's not really point now is it?
One day this blog/newsletter will shuttered, but until then, I will find and make space for it, because making space here makes space elsewhere, and it probably behooves me to be comfortable in front of a camera and it behooves me to be candid and it behooves me to leave some sort of record of the ephemeral even if sometimes it's complaining about the ephemeral.