Back to words

It's been nearly a month since I last wrote, and I feel it. I feel it in the stories and thoughts that were bunched up in my brain, waiting to be untangled and pulled out in words and posts, but instead left to collect and muddle up. I feel it in the want to process and record and remember, yet lacking the energy to do so. I feel it in the poetic phrases left unused, in moments of unwinding when I make the choice between writing, reading, vegging, or sleep. Obvious it hasn't been writing.

Everything goes in seasons. I can mark out phases of attitudes or focused time on hobbies in the past ten months: a fall semester of bottled-up chaos, the month of April when I cooked solely with my wok, the four months of regular running in preparation for my half. January with regular times of sitting, the last quarter of the academic calendar with lots of small moments to catch my breath, but not the long quiet days. Months where words and writings come easily and frequently. This past six months has not been one of them.

There is part of me that knows I can't equally handle all my hobbies at the same time, and that now is not really the time I'm going to choose writing as a discipline. But there's a deeper part of me that knows that writing is more than a hobby. That knows that putting life, experiences, thoughts to words puts value and significance to it.

So here I am, writing, writing again. Pen and paper, typed letters on a blank post--writing. If my thoughts and life is a scrunched up ball of string, then writing feels like finding the free end and slowly pulling it out, straightening, finding its usefulness again.