GAPS AND PAUSES

Despite any evidence to the contrary, I've not been writing all that much for a couple of weeks or more. You may have been experiencing business as usual during your visits here, but, to tell the truth, that's mostly been because there have been enough dregs and scrapings that I can fall back upon to somehow put something out there, but it's been something of a struggle to even manage that.

However, this morning, I woke up early, after a weekend of literary inactivity, determined to get back into the old routine, re-establish the habit, and get back to business in constructing today's posting for you.

And then…

Well, I just lay there. My mind was empty of everything except a sudden wave of depression and anxiety that so overwhelmed me that I almost pledged there and then to jack it all in and go and find something else to do with my time. Even the post which did briefly appear, a rant about something inconsequential that poured out of me a few days ago, suddenly seemed stupidly inappropriate and was hastily withdrawn and put back into the drafts folder for more tinkering, leaving me with nothing at all prepared for today.

But that shouldn't surprise me. Not after what the voices in my mind were bellowing at me from out of the darkness this morning.

You see, I believe that "the voice" has gone.

Those internal whisperings which at least attempt to inspire me each day and give me something to rattle on about seem to have been silenced, and, whilst I've often struggled to find the motivation to persevere, somehow I've always been able to rely upon a whisper to ignite an ember, and light whatever fire is in my mind that day, and, so far, something has always turned up.

But now the whisper seems to have been swamped, buried beneath a thousand other screams, all of which are full of sound and fury, but none of which are saying anything other than reminding me how difficult it is to shut out the noise and focus upon the thoughts with which we have entertained each other during these past few years.

I don't know… Maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis…? Or panicking over the loss of something that I never really had anyway…? Maybe it's just that sense of time having slipped away and left me as this tired and empty husk, stuffed full of unpopular and grumpy old opinions that nobody should really be interested in hearing about…?

I really have been struggling to enthuse with my blogging recently, as other things have come along to distract me, even though those "other things" achieve little other than swallowing up time, time which ought to be spent on far more positive things.

I worry that I'm becoming "passive" again, or that the various traumas of the past few years are finally catching up with me and getting the better of me, or that this sense of exhaustion and pointlessness is now a permanent state of being and that, from now on, I'm always going to feel like this.

Still, after forty-five months of pretty much non-stop scribbling, I suppose that it's only to be expected.

Forty-five…!!!

I know…! I was checking through the numbers when I realised that we'd just completed that number...

It seems ridiculous even to me, especially since there was so very little to say in all of that nonsense that I've been pouring out. Forty-five months of babbling about nothing for no good reason other than it seemed to serve some kind of purpose and make some kind of sense at the time.

Anyway, I suppose that this is just my roundabout way of mentioning that I just wanted to warn those of you who care about such things that there may be more gaps and pauses in my output over the coming weeks whilst I'm pulling myself together.

There may not be, of course, because you all know that we've been here before, and that suddenly things can shift into gear and normal service gets resumed, but right now, today, I'm really still to be convinced…

Happy thoughts…!