Creative Drought

I've been experiencing what I can only describe as a creative drought over the past few days, although to be honest I think this may stem back further than those few days.  The reason I focus on the past few days more though is because I set myself a goal to complete a month on Duolingo learning Swedish - this inspired a post which will be published in a few weeks time.  That month has now passed, my goal has been achieved, and as with every momentary distraction, reality has once again set in now that it can no longer occupy my mind and serve its purpose.

There are posts scheduled on this blog for a few weeks yet; as I have mentioned before, I write posts for this blog in batches but lately that buffer of content has been narrowing and it's getting to a point now where I might actually run out of content, and that's a problem.  I realise some people will dismiss this concern and assert that quality matters more than quantity etc, and yes that is true, but that's not the problem I am talking about.  The one thing I have held true with writing is that when I continue to practice it as a hobby, as a craft, as a discipline, whatever you want to call it, then it becomes easier to do - much like exercising your muscles.  The longer you go without doing it the harder it gets to start doing it again when you eventually try - if you eventually try.

2020 has been without a doubt one of the most fucked up years of my life.  That's a strange statement for me to make because in terms of the pandemic and its impact on my life, not a lot has actually changed.  I essentially worked from home before the pandemic hit in the first place so there was no routine of commuting etc to disrupt.  I don't like social engagements as noted previously because of my social anxiety so I wasn't exactly fully booked in that regard either and to be honest having the pandemic as an infallible excuse to say 'No' to everything without judgement was actually liberating.  The only real restriction I faced was the inability to leave the house as often as I did before which in hindsight I now realise was a lot more often than I thought. 

2017 and 2018 prepared me quite well for the changes that the pandemic brought; if you haven't read my other blog or my posts that briefly mentioned this, the abridged version is that I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and received treatment designed to weaken my immune system which also meant being overly cautious about what I was exposing myself to.  I went 3 months without takeout, without leaving the house even once, and with limited interaction with people beyond my immediate family that live with me, so in many regards I had a dry-run of quarantine.  Add social anxiety, and depression, and a few other minor health problems into the mix and you've pretty much got more than enough to prepare someone for what the pandemic itself had to offer.

Beyond the pandemic however, this year has not stopped throwing things at us, to the point where it is mentally and physically exhausting.  There is so much to think about and so much to navigate through in our day to day lives that when you add in the extreme lack of coping mechanisms you reach a point where the pursuit of distraction doesn't just become a desire for a break, it becomes something of a race in and of itself.  It's like a level of Mario running through a castle while a spiked ceiling descends, your timing has to be perfect, any deviation, one falter and you end up crushed by the weight of everything.

I mentioned a few days ago on twitter that I've found myself more and more just completely zoning out and staring into space not thinking about anything at all, like my mind has completely shut down.  These moments feel like breaking points where my brain has literally given up.  The impact to my life physically and environmentally might not have been as great as it has for many others, but the weight of the mental strain has been far greater than I have been willing to admit.  I've realised too just how much denial I have been in about how heavy that weight really is, but the thing above all else that's scary about this whole experience is the fact that it's not imagined.  With most things that you build up in your mind to be this magnitude, there is usually a moment of realisation when you are given context and you can see it's not as bad as you thought it was, but there is no relief here because it really is as bad as you think and in many cases it's even worse when you actually look at objective sources of information that focus on reality rather than political spin.

I am in no doubt that the UK decision to exit lockdown is not only an attempt at herd immunity despite the denials of our Government, but that every assertion is true, this is an economic decision, one that puts a bottom line before scientific advice, which shouldn't be surprising really when you look at the failings to recognise the risks of climate change among many other things that have been ignored for decades.  Beyond this though, other countries that exited lockdown have been experiencing spikes in the rate of infection and the global death toll continues to rise.  The Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 Dashboard shows the number of new cases daily is rising not falling.

Without having that moment of relief where you realise things aren't as bad as they seem, life gets very dark.  It's clear to see that one of the reasons the Government wants to pretend everything is normal is because they want people to believe it is, I'm not convinced this is in anyone's interest.  Denial and repression are extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms, they cause many more problems than they fix and some would argue they don't even fix those problems because you're putting a band aid on a bullet wound in essence.

When reality becomes so dark, the desire to escape it grows, but with that desire comes the inevitable blackout due to the pressure - like that moment of panic when someone asks you to name 5 animals and suddenly you forget the name of every animal that ever existed.  The demand for creativity, not a request, causes a form of mental resistance, your creative capacity short circuits and you're left staring at a blank page.  Even now the only reason I am able to write this post is because there is no creativity involved, I don't have to imagine anything, I just have to document how I am feeling and what I am thinking - incredibly frustrated, and desperately trying to imagine a realistic world that I would rather live in right now.