WHEN I DON'T WRITE
Chaos of the mind
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When I don’t write my mind enters a chaos state. I am unable to tell up from down, right from left, one side from the other. It no longer is clear who I love and why, if I am loved in return, or if I will ever love again.
What is it to love though? Sometimes I find that it is after the fact I see how deeply I loved and the regret of not cherishing that love fills me with grief. Nothing like laying on my back for six days to question the great dance of desire.
I have spent the last week mostly in my bed. Watching The OC, taking phone calls, going to 12 step meetings, and ruminating as far as my thoughts will take me, into an abyss of darkness and insecurity and fear. Scarcity to the point of no return.
I don’t recommend not writing if you are a writer. If writing is your calling and you also turned it into your job, or it revealed itself as your career - do not take a prolonged break from writing just because you are taking a break from work.
Perhaps this is not what you would expect the author of How to Not Always Be Working to tell you after a week of rest and healing. Yet the pendulum swings again and the grey areas remain grey.
If the modality to sift through the rubble becomes your job and you want to take a break from your job - what does it look like? What is work? The potential to earn, the willingness to create something with the intention to exchange money, marketing and promotion of self and services. I am overdue for a new set of lists to gain clarity on what is work, what is not work, and what are the tasks at hand that must not be set aside just because sometimes they earn money.
When I planned for my week of rest, healing, and time to be taken care of, I made no goals or plans for any creative activities. No art making, no work, no processing, no nothing I thought - I will really do nothing but heal. Ok I am here to tell you that this lead me into the depths of hell that exist in my mind and it’s really not for me! Struck with reminders of I Do Not Meditate but let’s call it, I do not do nothing. I must write, I must write even chopped up and sewn back together. I must write even sort of high on pain meds and staring out the window. I must write in between episodes of Seth Cohen saying his one liners just before Phantom Planet’s iconic piano line comes in with Ryan looking out the window. I must write if I want to stay floating above every thought that my mind lies to me about.
Writing doesn’t mean work. Every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square. It is true that nothing I would have written this week would have made much sense but I didn’t become a writer to make sense I became a writer to write. Writing became me.
The cocoon from public facing writing and sharing brought some discomfort that I was willing to sit with, and I think would have felt easier with writing. Morning pages sufficed in some ways but, the art of the blank google doc with no intention to share or pressure to craft into a work of art is an activity I do not take up often enough.
Struck by the muse at the foot of the temple, it is not the sweeping of the steps that guarantees brilliance, but promises a path back to ourselves.
Many people sent letters and gifts, made me food, sent venmo money for takeout, texted me, dm-ed me, lit candles on altars, and held me in the deep deep web of care this week while I recovered from a radical reduction non flat top surgery - thank you, I felt every ounce of love.
Reddit is heaven for a guy like me - if you’re considering your own gender affirming surgery I highly recommend the many threads - reduction, radical reduction, non binary, top surgery, non flat top surgery - and more! There are so many ways to be trans and outside the binary of the body
Samantha Irby recommends Getting to Center in Elle Magazine
Listening to Plantasia this morning
I watched Trainwreck on Netflix about Woodstock 99 and while I am glad I watched it it made me feel so incredibly sad
I also watched Monster and that also made me sad (suddenly starts realizing everything I have watched this week is …. sad)
I watched 13 going on 30 and that didn’t feel sad and made me want to have my own office somewhere and date Mark Ruffalo
I watched Premonition starring Sandra Bullock and I love Sandy more than I can say but that was a very bad movie
The OC is really a show about teenagers who need Al Anon
Detoxbaddies is my favorite meme account
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