Writer's Block

I haven't been writing as much as I used to because I don't really have anything to say anymore and that bothers me. There was once a time when I'd be sitting in the back row of a 500 person lecture writing letters to good friends about the future, about the limitless possibilities and where they might lead us. I suppose the reason I'm so idle now in my thinking isn't the approach, but the fact that I'm freshly arrived at what I once day dreamed about... and the results are mixed.

I think the most difficult thing about life sometimes is not having remarkable things to share. By remarkable, I don't necessarily mean noteworthy or profound, but rather something consistent, something you can stake a claim to as an honest reflection of how you actually feel. For me, for these days, there tends to be an increasing emergence of subtle posturing, all the while just sitting back and letting the world trickle in at a convenient pace. For instance, I might stay in on a Saturday night, switch my phone to off and try to watch all three of my Netflix movies (usually falling asleep halfway through the last one). Or I might spend an hour walking around a secondhand store, listening to Coltrane on the headphones, wondering what kind of sandwich I'm going to make when I get home. I might even put a Rolling Rock or two in my jacket pockets, go to the park, sit under the first tree I get to and scribble curious little drawings in one of the dozen notebooks I keep amassing but never finishing. These are all nice little distractions during what, these days, amounts to an underwhelmingly normal life. I feel like I do these things because I enjoy them, but who knows, maybe I do them because I want other people to associate these things with me. With a void of substantive purpose, perhaps we spend our time subconsciously conjuring up a role we would be well suited to play to give ourselves (and others) something to talk about. Like all these little routines fuel us to tilt closer to that personal light we seek, quietly trying to tell the world just who we are and what we stand for.

Some people keep score at Cubs games to make everyone seated around them aware that they are true fans, students of the game. Others stand outside Starbucks with clipboards asking perfect strangers if they want to be part of the solution to display their honest dedication to *pick a cause*. Then there are those that are so tortured for attention and recognition that they begin a blog to write sentence fragments about how confusing twentysomething life can be (I know, I know, it's true). Perhaps these things that fill time in our lives, whether it's a side job or a co-ed sports league or a mild drug habit or a loving pet give us some momentum. They illustrate our ability to get out of bed on a rainy Monday and not curse whatever deficiency exists in our daily lives. Hell, maybe that very thing we hang our hats on is our primary deficiency and, unbeknownst to us, there is a gaggle of our good friends somewhere behind closed doors wringing their hands and wondering what's to be done about it.

I guess what my original thought on this matter was: What does the writers block mean? Does the lack of a persistent series of remarkable mini-miracles (like the recognition of watching seagulls strafing against the wind at sunset) mean anything? Am I asking too many pointless questions? Is the grass greener as far as memories go? Are we helpless to attain that exact thing we seek if we can't fully verbalize what it is? Do we pick up rocks on the side of the road only to one day trade them in for a rock collecting hobby because that's who we are, or does the twinkle of the amethyst distract us? It's all too much sometimes. I guess I should just leave it at that.