Waiting for the Meds to Kick In

I actually wanted to read but I realized I'm more tired than I think. I wanted to write by hand in my journal but I am too tired to set things up. (Yes, I need to "set things up" because I have a tiny space and I can only have one thing at a time going and the typing machines have not been cleared away when I ended the work day so...)

Just a while ago after I posted my last post, I wondered about a few things about this blog. First is why I bother to write them. Blogging in long form seems to have had its era and it's not now. At least not for the personal or passion-driven kind like this one. So I actually asked myself why I still do it. And I came up with these answers:

1) It's my personal public journal. I have a handwritten journal but sometimes I want to journal out here. I don't have people with whom I can talk about the things I write here so I write here to talk to you, the universe, to someones and no ones. Maybe, just maybe, one of you will read a post and find comfort that you are not alone.

2) I want to practice my writing and put it out there (here). Ever since I was in high school I have wanted to be a writer of one kind or another. But I ended up becoming an artist who also writes. I used to be a poet, during the phase in my life when falling in love was high season. Then I wanted to write novels. Then I somehow just ended up writing research reports and bullet points and presentations on topics without magic. Then at some point I could no longer find the words for the other life I would rather be living and I felt like I was struck dumb and couldn't poem myself out of danger. So I started painting in my search for my lost words, and then the words let themselves be found in tiny pieces, in fragments, mostly broken, mostly missing parts and meaning.

3) This might be my only published writings. I have made attempts with handmade books of collected poems (I've sent a few to former objects of my affection in the 1990s, including traveling all the way to Athens, Georgia to leave a gift of handbound poems at the doorstep of Michael Stipe's old house.) I have small "published" works of market trends in the company website but oh, I want to write about things that are not yet, things that may be, things hoped for, things dreamed of.

Lately I have been reading again (yes I also lost reading somehow, lost it for years during the pandemic, and the more distant I became from writing without the words of other writers to ignite a spark in me) (I also lost reading when I went back to corporate employment after a decade of freelancing as I grappled with the shift from old school advertising to the current omni-digital one.)

But since last week, as I lay in bed, recovering from the same sickness that struck me three years ago when I re-entered the employed workforce, the hunger for reading came back. A reading rage, as I used to call it. And this time there are sparks again. And to fan them into flame I write. Looking for my voice again among words and metaphors. Navigating through the latest language distortions and reinventions seeking what I can use and what I can recreate myself.

Lately I have been wanting to write poems again. But I need love for that. And I have had a hard time with love for the past near decade, unless we count the unconditional love of more than twenty feline furballs. Yes, come to think of it, perhaps that is a restart I can take. T.S. Eliot did have a book on cat poetry.