Why Can't I Write Anymore?

    I had no idea how hard this would be.

Over the years, for one reason or another, there have been sizable chunks of time where I didn't write. Just didn't. Any writer worth a damn will tell you that's a bad idea if you want to preserve your skills at all. But in life, of course, you can't always control what happens, so there were some long stretches of time where I didn't flex my creative muscles, didn't put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to produce something other than another useless report for work. I abused my gift. I almost hesitate to call it that because I'm not a braggart by nature, but I'm not blind either. When I read over some of my early pieces...a lot of it is infected with that youthful tendency to overwrite and amplify, but some of it, I can say with a bit of pride, is just plain good.

    Each time I stopped, it got harder to prime the pump, whatever that thing is in my head that lets me come up with ideas. Each time, I swore that I would take writing seriously once I got going again. I swore I'd carry around a notepad to jot my ideas down. Tune my ears to how people around me talked and lay it down in a good piece of writing that would do them--and me--justice. Each time, I gave a great effort for about 2 weeks and then skunked it. But it was okay. I could come back to it any time. And I did. That's the thing about being young and stupid; you think your juice will always be there.

    Then life started to happen: I got a girlfriend, I got a full-time job during the day (while keeping my part-time one at night), I got my own place up on Ridge, got bills and responsibilities. In short, I got occupied. My day job is filled with meaningless paperwork, arcane procedures, micromanaging bosses, and small concessions of my dignity. My night job promises nothing except for a grimy, aching body and continuous threats to my employment. My girlfriend (whom I dearly love, by the way) has been trained by her family (a pack of jackasses if ever there was one) to sublimate her needs, to dissemble, to fear and anticipate every possible negative outcome of a situation. My current college experience is starting to remind me why I so strenuously avoided going to college for years in the first place. I spend my days off playing catch-up with the errands and chores I'm too busy to do during the week. I spend money on a therapist who barely talks to me. I am miserable; despite Pink Floyd's warnings, I am in the machine.

    To me, being a good writer, or at least having fun with writing, necessitates having time to absorb things and let them soak in your brain for a while. To make a fine wine, it's got to have ample time to ferment. My thing is, I don't even have time to press the grapes.

    So imagine my joy when the other night, with my girlfriend fast asleep, my homework done, and the night off from the second job, I found some time not occupied by relationship problems, work concerns or needlessly complex college assignments! I don't know if this happens to other people who write, but I found myself looking at a blank sheet of paper and feeling what could only be described as a sexual thrill. That is, the urge to write something, anything, on that page produced the powerful feeling of excitement and longing that people usually associate with sex. It was that bad. I sat down to write, and nothing happened. Not a big deal; I've had writer's block before. A couple of hours later, I try again. I squeeze out a limerick, the kind of dirty ditty I can do in my sleep. Not too promising. I stayed up about 4 hours past my usual bedtime trying to write something of substance, and got nothing. Nothing.

    Since that night, I've tried intermittently to get something down on paper with little success. So now, I'm relying on that old standby, the journal entry, to get me going again. But even this exercise, normally so easy for me, is like trying to squeeze a lump of coal to make a diamond. Is it all gone?

    "Is this what it is to be truly adult? To gradually lose everything that make you happy and get burdened with more and more responsibility until eventually one day you just say the hell with it, give up and die? If that's the case, then I wonder if it's not too late to back out. Or I would wonder, if I didn't know that it's already too late."

    I wrote that passage when I was 19. I was kind of melodramatic. I still am, I think, but not as much as I used to be. But the feeling behind it remains.

    I don't want to lose the things that give me joy. I don't want to.

    Please God, let it come back.