On Unblocking What is Blocked

Am I falling at the first hurdle?

All photos © The Autumn Chronicles

They say to write what you know and what I know this week is that I can barely string a sentence together. Everything I start ends up in the bin, crossed out, crumpled up and quite often accompanied by an exasperated sigh. I have lost the natural flow of words and my writing has sounded contrived, overwrought, stale. “Not good enough”, whispers the sneering voice of my inner critic, never one to refuse an opportunity to kick me while I’m down.

I know why this has happened. I have let the stress build in my day job to the extent that it is all-consuming and in times of stress, I become so tired, mentally and physically, that it runs bone-deep, right into the marrow of my being, leading me to lose any creativity I may have had. The irony is that I need creative pursuits to deal with the stress but the stress cancels out any impulse, any spark and often any desire to be creative at all. It is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other and get through the day.

Ideally, I should be taking my own advice and engaging in intentional rest. But what do you do when life is so hectic that it is hard to carve out the time necessary to re-balance? When the aching tiredness is so completely at the core of your being that it is a challenge to even give voice to what you want? As someone who always puts pressure on herself to do something to the absolute best of her ability, even when it only requires 75% effort, this is a repeated cycle in my life and one I am trying hard to break.

For me, this weekend, it looks like sitting in the garden in the sunshine, watching the clouds drift and the butterflies flutter by. It looks like reading for fun, letting myself be absorbed in, and surrounded by, words so that hopefully they find me again. It looks like writing how I feel and what I observe in my journal so that I don’t lose the practice of putting pen to paper completely. It looks like spending time with friends who accept me as I am and are always supportive and loving, regardless. It looks like just letting myself be, without the expectation to do any specific thing or assume any specific outcome.

Most of all, it looks like dreaming of my upcoming holiday and all the rest, relaxation, new experiences and core memories that I hope it will provide. My husband fervently believes that once I stop, once I let my shoulders descend and my jaw unclench, once I let myself relax instead of worrying about things over which I have no (or very little) control, inspiration will pour out of me and I won’t feel so frustrated with myself. I very much hope he is right.