Before January 1st of this year, my most recent blog entry was dated July 31st. That means that I didn’t write for five solid months. I wrote one other thing during that time but it wasn’t on this blog and I had started it before July 31st. I also took a personal essay writing class but the essay that I wrote didn’t really work so it’s still sitting in my writing folder on my laptop. I’ve had writing gaps like this before. I’ve been blocked. I’ve been busy. There are always a million reasons not to write. This time I was aware that I wasn’t writing and I felt pretty powerless to change it.
Here are a few things that I’ve learned.
1. If you put “Fuck” or “Stripper” in the title of your blog posts, your blog will still get hits even if you ignore it for a while.
Even though I wasn’t writing, I would still periodically check my stats in Jetpack to see what kind of traffic I was getting. And every day I would get ten hits on my blog, each for My Teacher the Stripper and Holy Fuck! 11 Stock Images of Hands on Fucking Keyboards! They were getting hits because someone in Turkey or Greece was googling “stripper” or “fucking.” A misguided attempt to see internet porn was the only reason people were checking out my blog for those five months but clicks are clicks, y’all.
2. I need to be happy to write.
This is actually true for any creative endeavor and it’s sort of counter intuitive. The worst periods of one’s life can be the most fruitful for being creative. But for me to actually sit down and write, I actually have to be in a good place, mentally. I can’t have any sort of existential crisis going on. Last year, everything fell apart but in a first world kind of way.
I already told you how 2017 started: with me violently vomiting all through the wee hours of January 1st.
On January 20th, Donald Trump was inaugurated.
I had a lot of work trouble last year. I had quit a web development job to audition for commercials. In March I went on an audition. After the first take the casting director kind of perked her head up, “Where are you from again? Have I seen you before?” “Oh, I heard about this through the Magnet.” “Okay, well, that was great, do one more.” I got a callback and they told me I had first refusal. That basically meant that the job was mine to lose. It was the step that I was looking for.
On the day of the callback there was a huge snowstorm. My callback was cancelled as was the client’s flight. The spot was postponed. I never heard from them again.
I also turned forty in March, which isn’t bad in and of itself (in fact, I had a really great birthday party in which several friends showed up for me in a big way to be part of a birthday show). I just had no idea how to feel about forty. I knew what thirty would feel like but forty was always just an idea. I always thought that I would be too consumed by life at forty to even be cognizant of turning forty. By forty you’re supposed to be operating at steady state: the job, the spouse, the children. But I entered my forties with about as much clarity as I entered my thirties.
Six days after I turned forty I got dumped.
In April, I lost a freelance web development gig.
In May I got a new freelance gig. Then in June, the recruiter who got me the freelance gig told me I had lost the freelance gig. Money worries ensued.
Over the summer, my improv group of six years started to crack. In September, we were cut.
Also, over the summer, I started running and dieting, which led to foot drop, which kept me terrified for the whole rest of the year. I went to the emergency room for that foot drop on July 31st – the date of my last blog entry in 2017. That is not a coincidence.
I know people who went through far worse in 2017 – suicides, broken marriages. I also still had a roof over my head and food in my belly. But for me last year was more about the breadth of the things that fell apart rather than the depth. The physical, the recreational, the professional, the personal, the restart button was hit on each of them. And because of that I couldn’t write.
3. Solipsism is an effective way to deal with the world’s problems.
Donald Trump had been taunting North Korea and my friends were all worried about a nuclear war. The Me Too movement was on everyone’s mind because of Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK (and, as a man, I don’t mean to make that about me in any way but it did make me fear for humanity a bit). But my own little world of crap kept spinning and I was oblivious to the reality all around me. I have to be honest, it was kind of great. Focusing on what was in front of me got me through some terrible times for world at large. I just didn’t have the energy to worry about other problems. It was selfish, it was cowardly, and it worked like a charm.
I finally feel like I’m coming out of the doldrums of last year. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t write for the second half of last year. It made no difference in anyone’s life. Well, that’s not true, it made a difference my own. Writing gives my life some meaning. Writing here every day this year has helped. Having a daily practice of any kind helps. Tomorrow I turn forty-one. I’m going to wake up, meditate, go for a run, and have a cup of coffee. I’ll write something here too. It’s going to be a good day.
