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Muse, Where Art Thou?
I can’t even count the number of unfinished entries I’ve saved to my hard drive over the past ten days. But for reasons I can’t explain, I always hit a wall at 500 words and become completely unable to articulate—or finish—an adult thought. I can’t reflect, analyze, or rant. The only thing I can do for a sustained period of time seems to be whining about reverse culture shock like a needy, angsty teenager. I have plenty of those sorts of entries finished, but you can be sure they’ll never see the light of day.
I may not have inhibitions about sharing stuff on the Internet, but I still have my standards, and my pride.
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It worries me greatly, this inability to write. Words have always been a fascination and a protection, a source of curiosity and care, a comfort and release. I was the sort of child who demanded bedtime stories (and naptime ones, too), read out on the playground during recess, kept diaries, went to the library at every chance she got. I developed into the sort of adult who loves learning foreign languages, can happily hold conversations about grammar or etymology, and spends way too much of her time and disposable income at bookshops. Even if my ability to read remains intact for now, it disturbs me that I’ve only been able to use words passively—to absorb, but not share or create.
And it’s frustrating, too, because the almost four weeks since I’ve returned to the United States have included some of the most personally painful days in recent memory. Although I never came close to thinking of Melbourne, for all my affection, as “home” during the last five months, I’ve caught myself thinking more than once lately that I belong there more than I do here—that I fit in there more than I do there, that I should leave. One should have someone—or someplace—to work out these thoughts, and it seems like writing in the blog for that purpose seems to be unavailable to me.
(Don’t misunderstand, please: some of you who read this blog have generously exchanged emails, or spent hours—sometimes very odd hours—on the phone with me, trying to help me get through this funk. And I can’t thank you enough for that. But there is a part of me that has always relied on writing as a catharsis and as a tool to put stuff right; as an introvert, it’s what I’ve relied on before, and after, I’ve turned to others. To be without that now, in a period of great change—even turmoil—makes me feel like one of my dearest friends is missing. Other loved ones may take up the time I normally spend with that friend or do the same things I did with her, but they cannot replace her or fool me into thinking she is present).
To make this worse, it’s not like I’m lacking things to write about. Since I’ve been back, I’ve gone to concerts and poked around museums, thought seriously about everything from international trade to cooking, worked on a site redesign, and discovered lots of jewels on the Web that are worth pointing out. Considering I don’t have anything on my plate right now that requires strict adherence to a schedule (like, oh, a job), you’d think it’d be easy enough to post every once in a while…
Sigh. I suppose there’s no use beating myself up over what’s already done—especially since I’m hardly the first person who’s ever gone through massive amounts of writer’s block. It may just be worth it to take it one day at a time, to post little by little. Because I can’t help thinking that every day I don’t post, every day I keep silent, is another day these issues—issues worth examining, if only for my own sake—remain inside of me, unresolved. I don’t know if that is reason enough to post publicly rather than write everything out in a private little paper journal hidden away, but I have nothing worth hiding—so I might as well.
We’ve all got to start somewhere. And that alone may be reason enough.
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