In 2020 things slowed down for me. I think they probably slowed down for you, too, I’m sure, but, for me, I made the choice to actually stop. Stop hustling and trying and forcing and working, really. Then over the next couple of years I stopped doing more and more. I slowed down further. I erased things and deleted things. I tried new things and then stopped doing those things, too. I thought about erasing and deleting this website, because I thought I had also stopped writing. I thought I wasn’t a writer anymore.
I didn’t actually stop writing, though. I just stopped working on my writing. I did a lot of writing, actually. I wrote for my work, I wrote and filled several journals of various sorts. And while I didn’t work on them, I did write some poems.
Not just since 2020 but for a long time I have missed someone I used to be, someone playful and creative and willing to make things just for the sake of making them. She didn’t work on things - she just made them. I haven’t known this person for a very long time. If you know me at all, you probably have never known her, or haven’t known her in a long time. She is very old because she was very young, and I know exactly where she went and why, but that’s not really the point of what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, I’m now working to be, again, someone playful and creative and willing to make things just for the sake of making them. The problem is that I am very good at making making things into work. In the past, I have made my writing work. But maybe that’s how I will make playing play again, by making it into work.
I did that this year, actually. I put a bunch of things that I’d written since 2020 just for the sake of writing them into a pile, into a folder, tabulated them, turned qualitative data into quantitative data. I made several To Do lists and checked off several boxes. I attended meetings (honestly) about these things. I color coded these things. And over time I saw that when I thought I had stopped writing, that when I wasn’t a writer anymore, I had actually made something very big and very interesting and something that I was very proud of. The work wasn’t working anymore, but something else was. Maybe it’s all gone back around in a circle, making to work to making work making, to working on making the making something workable. Maybe I’m overthinking this.
This is all to say that - well, I’m still here. I’m still a writer. I hate saying that, but I guess it’s true. And I have new writing to share now, today. And I will have new writing to share in the near future. The hiatus is officially on hiatus. I am working again.