Sunday, June 5, 2011

A long road

It's like being wrung out, nothing more inside, nothing more to say, or even if there were, not wanting to say it because what would it matter. Stepping away from writing is the most difficult thing,  it is the skill that has defined my being for most of my life. Writing is intensely personal, you do it alone, you and the blinking cursor, blank page that you fill with words, sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes painstakingly. Longing for the creative outlet and perhaps reaching an audience. That's what having a blog is about, writing about something and sharing it with people who may or may not have similar likes and dislikes.

But looking back at the last few years, it was as if the writing had become more and more bitter, less and less about what creativity. More about the situations that unfolded and the discomfort of dealing with things that had very little chance of being resolved. It was about venting rather than exploding with the weight of responsibility.  Understanding that it would require radical changes to reach a new place and perhaps it was time to do just that without second guessing. It is also about understanding how much the world has changed. This is how people must have felt in the 60's when man went to the moon, it was so radically different to everything that came before and then the rapid changes due to technology that turned everything on its head. Pedestrian by today's standards to be sure, those changes triggered an even bigger explosion hurtling us towards a very different, unexpected outcome to what our parents planned for  those of us born in that hopeful time.

After nearly a year of not writing it feels like trying to ride a bicycle that hasn't been oiled in a  long time. Or the inability to do a forward bend after a long lay off from yoga. Creaky, lumbering, not graceful or even interesting, but what else to do.