The small, oscillating space heater makes a grinding sound when it changes direction. It’s chilly and dark. 6am and I’m bogged down with a case of the “why bothers?” The why bothers make it difficult to write. Daily practice, which I have forsaken, tends to keep the why bothers at bay. Heavily afflicted, as I have been these past few weeks (months?), I tend to write a few paragraphs, abandon them, write a few different paragraphs, abandon those too, etc. etc. repeat until I get to the point where the only thing I can write about is why I’m not writing. Why bother?
In the trash heap of abandoned paragraphs are a handful about toxic masculinity and the increasing tension between the sexes (women have every right to be done with men); a few paragraphs detailing a recent experience in which I thought I was doing a good thing, but then had second thoughts; a few paragraphs about why I’m a passive person and how that impacts my relationships (looking for wow and consistency but can’t promise that I can deliver the same); one paragraph about loafing on a random Tuesday morning; and a paragraph about ambition… Dating back to late September, I’ve posted seventeen times to this site and abandoned 22 different posts.
Why bother? I don’t expect to answer that question. The rut is complicated. I have less time now compared to a few months ago – work, occasional commutes, etc. For a while, I’ve been feeling emotionally drained – mostly about politics and current affairs and worry over what the future will look like under authoritarian rule. I’ve also been feeling a lot more distant towards the things I’ve written in the past. In some cases, I don’t identify with the person I was five or six years ago or even two years ago.
It would be easy to paint all of this as some massive internal struggle, a deep and paralyzing malaise, but it’s much more of a shrug than a struggle. It would be easy to say that life has gotten busy, but last night I wasted two hours scrolling social media and dating sites looking for some outside stimulation in the form of outrage (social media) or conversation (dating sites) and found neither. I probably found something over which to express outrage, but was too tired to care.
Perhaps more dangerous than the malaise is the feeling that writing something, anything, is both a chore and an embarrassment. This is when I’m most tempted to take the entire site down, or revisit and revise, or simply walk away and leave things just as they are. The building process, for now, has little to no appeal.
I will, of course, do none of those things. Instead, I’ll make several attempts to get back to basics… to read more or find stimulation elsewhere. I’ll teeter-totter between wanting to establish new, more productive routines and falling into old and unproductive habits. All the while, I’ll wonder about purpose, and audience, and why one even bothers….