Oh, dear…it’s another one of those days in which, to keep to my pact to post an essay a day, I write an essay in which…well, in which I really don’t blame you if you stop reading it.
I write about days like this because often, well, I have days like this. Right now, yes, I have a couple of ideas that I could write about, but I just don’t want to.
No, right now, at this moment, no idea really seems all that exciting to me. The only thing that really feels worthwhile, from a writing standpoint, is to write about this utterly blah feeling of blah.
This feeling of blah is not some sort of horribly depressing pit of despair. It’a more like a gloomy murk, in which I wish I hadn’t quit smoking. If I smoked, I’d have a really good way to just sit and waste time; now, alas, that option is no longer open to me.
Oh, yeah, to those who follow my life: two and a half weeks now. Today I switch from 21 milligram nicotine patches to 14 milligram patches. Progress.
Even on these days of blah, words come to me.
These words.
Words about just sitting here, feeling blah, and wanting to write about nothing more than feeling blah.
One thing I notice about feeling blah like this is that I always imagine everyone else is doing really substantial stuff. While I write these words of blah, all these other people are writing great fiction, or dynamic essays that are a joy to read.
I sort of have this image of all of King Arthur’s knights on the quest for The Holy Grail, and I’m still in the castle, sitting in my room, fully clad in armor, with my feet propped up on a desk. If I still smoked, I’d be smoking a cigarette, and then another. With a quill pen, I’d be writing about how I’m just not in the mood to look for The Holy Grail.
“Everyone else is totally into this quest thing,” I’d write. “I’m just not feeling it.”
The really cruel thing about this feeling of blah is that it feels as if it’s going to last forever. In moments like this, I feel as if I will sit here for eternity, not smoking, writing word after word about how I really don’t feel as if I have anything to write about.
This will change. At some point, I will keep writing, and then stumble onto something worth writing about. This will happen, because it always happens.
Such a moment, in fact, often leads to many other moments, really wonderful moments in which I’m writing a story or an essay about something truly interesting. In fact, sometimes these moments pile up, so that I write more than one essay. Then a story idea might even creep up on me, and I start writing about that.
I love those moments. I look forward to them.
That is not this moment, though. Today, I’m just writing so that I can say that I wrote. That’s it.
Today, I write from The Land of Blah.
I write about days like this because often, well, I have days like this. Right now, yes, I have a couple of ideas that I could write about, but I just don’t want to.
No, right now, at this moment, no idea really seems all that exciting to me. The only thing that really feels worthwhile, from a writing standpoint, is to write about this utterly blah feeling of blah.
This feeling of blah is not some sort of horribly depressing pit of despair. It’a more like a gloomy murk, in which I wish I hadn’t quit smoking. If I smoked, I’d have a really good way to just sit and waste time; now, alas, that option is no longer open to me.
Oh, yeah, to those who follow my life: two and a half weeks now. Today I switch from 21 milligram nicotine patches to 14 milligram patches. Progress.
Even on these days of blah, words come to me.
These words.
Words about just sitting here, feeling blah, and wanting to write about nothing more than feeling blah.
One thing I notice about feeling blah like this is that I always imagine everyone else is doing really substantial stuff. While I write these words of blah, all these other people are writing great fiction, or dynamic essays that are a joy to read.
I sort of have this image of all of King Arthur’s knights on the quest for The Holy Grail, and I’m still in the castle, sitting in my room, fully clad in armor, with my feet propped up on a desk. If I still smoked, I’d be smoking a cigarette, and then another. With a quill pen, I’d be writing about how I’m just not in the mood to look for The Holy Grail.
“Everyone else is totally into this quest thing,” I’d write. “I’m just not feeling it.”
The really cruel thing about this feeling of blah is that it feels as if it’s going to last forever. In moments like this, I feel as if I will sit here for eternity, not smoking, writing word after word about how I really don’t feel as if I have anything to write about.
This will change. At some point, I will keep writing, and then stumble onto something worth writing about. This will happen, because it always happens.
Such a moment, in fact, often leads to many other moments, really wonderful moments in which I’m writing a story or an essay about something truly interesting. In fact, sometimes these moments pile up, so that I write more than one essay. Then a story idea might even creep up on me, and I start writing about that.
I love those moments. I look forward to them.
That is not this moment, though. Today, I’m just writing so that I can say that I wrote. That’s it.
Today, I write from The Land of Blah.
