I am the first writer on Earth to battle Writer’s Block.
She was big and broad like a shadowy brick wall. She loomed proudly between my writing desk and me. She crouched heavy on my shoulders as I struggled to type. She swiped words off of documents and attachments off emails. She was brutal, but up-front. The consequences of her actions were pressing and meaningful, and this made her easier to face and defeat.
Since my last graduation, Block has shrunk, but not disappeared. Her power remains the same, but her effect is more insidious. Now she comes to me in different forms; she is the sense of dread I get when I pay attention to the news, she is the exhaustion that comes from repeating myself, she is a day-job and a 5-to-9. She is harder to see coming now, and therefore, she has been harder to dodge.
She’s been holding me down for two months, and I have not been fighting as hard as I would like to.
Part of my problem has been my indecision on what exactly to write. bottlerag.org is meant to be home to posts of all kinds; blogs, articles, stories, poems, scripts, photos. Despite this, I have been putting pressure on myself to only write article type content. This is the kind of pressure that comes from working as an unpaid editor in a campus news room. Back in college, when I used to have the motivation to take 20 credits, work a part-time job, and help run the newspaper, news articles often fell into my lap and became my responsibility. Like clockwork, I would do the research and the interviews, then write a quick 500-1000 word piece.
I was taught (and this is a good thing to teach aspiring web journalists) that a news website or magazine should have news, and unfortunately, no one wants to write the news, because it’s difficult and boring– but I can’t deal with, all the time (apparently), is the constant flow of horror…
Every day, something new and terrible happens with Trump and Musk and the cabinet of buffoons. Every day, I am reminded that facism consumes people and so many willingly succumb to it, even people who wouldn’t even consider themselves right leaning. Too often, I hear white liberal people my age commenting on the state of things (essentially) “It’s so terrible and there’s nothing we can do about it!”. When I hear this sentiment I have the compulsion to nearly shriek: “You can do everything! You’re in a place of privilege and if you actually show your discontent by participating in protests, or dedicating your time to spreading useful information and doing what you can to help others or at least just not eating at Chik-filet and McDonalds, maybe we could actually limit some of the power these dark oppressive forces have over our society.” But I fear, people do not like when you shriek at them, and sometimes when I’m writing about the state of the world on here, I feel like I’m shrieking. I feel like I’m being repetitive, and I wonder if I am really reaching the people who need to be reached.
Srcondly,
I used to do a lot of my writing on Mondays and Tuesdays, but now with my weekly radio shows (shout out! tune in 7-9 pm MST), that has changed. Ideally, I could be using other time during the week to write, but then there is the constant hindrance of having a full-time job. I am so tired all the time.
I put too much pressure on myself. I don’t have faith in any of my own ideas. I type half a page and decide it’s garbage, I start again, I start again, I abandon. I start a project and I avoid it. It’s not inactivity, it’s moving in circles. This is my third time starting this post, and this post is so far barely about anything.
My band has had two shows in the last couple weeks. We have performed as a group before, but only at houses. These were our first venue shows. We did good at both of them, and we are going to get better. I struggle to keep my cool on stage. It’s not like a play, I’m not playing a character, but I am playing a part. I’m playing the part of Milkweed as Indie Rocker. I’m not by any means renowned, but it is true that there are people in this world who are now more familiar with a projection I am inventing of myself than with the actual me.
In a similar way, Milkweed is a projection too. Even more so. Milkweed is faceless. Milkweed is just an amalgamation of the details I choose to share in writing or on the radio. Milkweed is a name.
But isn’t this what I want for myself? Is this not the love of media? The desire to become a projection of yourself through your writing and your performance.
I’ve been having an existential crisis.
All I’ve ever wanted was to write and create, and now I’m doing that sometimes, but not in the ways I wish I could. Most of the time I just go to work and get tired. Most of the time I just go to work and get annoyed.
I don’t know what to do to do what I want. I look for other jobs, but I fear that all of them will always be all consuming. I worry that I’m never going to truly have the time to be the person I want to be and that thought shakes me.
I know none of this is necessarily original. I’m not the first person in their mid-twenties to feel directionless and disillousioned. It’s a problem I will find a way through, just like I will find my way to writing more again. I will find the energy and I will find the time– The way things always have to work out, eventually.
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