It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post I can barely string my sentences together. It’s embarrassing.
I get home from work, walk into my room, my laptop and journal catch my eye… and I ignore them. I fear I’ve actually developed a phobia of writing. I wish I had an excuse, but I don’t.
It’s not even that I’ve lacked the time. That certainly was the case throughout late March and all of April. We moved house. I was shoulders deep in masking tape, cardboard boxes and the piles of random junk that had accumulated in the dark recesses of our built-in wardrobes over 5 years. Every day, throughout April, I would find something else in the house that we didn’t know we had (but that I almost certainly bought online while I was on maternity leave) and I spent the following days trying to sell it online. By the end of April we’d made close to $2000 on the random stuff I’d found… but I’m sure we spent more than double that when we bought it…
But that part’s over. We’re now one week away from June. We’re almost at the end of the financial year. And I haven’t written a thing. Sure, I’ve packed stuff, sold stuff, moved stuff and stored stuff. And I’ve managed to squeeze a 3-bedroom townhouse worth of belongings into two bedrooms of my in-laws house. Mum even cooks dinner before we even get home from work, so one would argue I have more time now than ever before. But I still haven’t written a thing (excluding stuff I’ve written for work because, well, a woman’s gotta make a living).
Instead, when the opportunities arise and I a half hour appears and I find myself wondering what I should do, I’ve actually avoided writing.
I’m not proud of this. In fact, I’m ashamed of it. So ashamed that the longer it occurs, the worse it gets.
I find myself caught in an awful loop where I avoid writing by finding something else to read… and then time passes and I realise how much crap I’ve read on the internet and I become acutely aware of how much noise there is on the internet, and I tell myself not to add more noise. So I don’t write. Instead, I read. I read more crap, find more noise, refuse to add to the noise, then read some more… and so it goes. The result is not much writing.
I tell myself I haven’t had much I’ve wanted to add to the conversation. That I’ve got nothing I want to say.
But… that’s not true. I had quite a lot I wanted to get off my chest when the Federal Government decided to say “happy mothers’ day” by calling women like me “double-dippers” who “rorted” the system by accepting both government and employer-funded paid parental leave. Talk about a slap in the face. I am still not over that, even though they’ve admitted how dumb that was.
But I still didn’t write.
I have a few draft articles sitting in a folder, waiting to publish in another online magazine.
But I haven’t finished them.
I’ve had a few hours I could’ve dedicated to writing another chapter in my book. But I washed clothes and did the ironing instead. Like… I actually CHOSE housework over recreation. WTF, Joy?
I even went to Sydney Writers’ Festival last week and got all teary after meeting one of my literary heroes, John Marsden. But instead of putting pen to paper, I buried my head in a book. Or three. Over the past 10 days I’ve read The Rosie Project, The Fault in Our Stars, Happiness by Design and am now well into The Rosie Effect.
Book count = 3.5. Word count = 0.
Whyyyyy??
Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m afraid that what I have to write or say doesn’t actually matter at all. Not that it mattered much in the first place. Maybe PMS is just lasting extra long this month. Maybe the removalists lost the box that has my writing mojo in it.
WHO KNOWS.
All I know is I better find it soon. Can’t be much of a writer if I’m not doing much writing… right?