So I’m stumped. My Muse, which served me so well back in the glory days of FireflyFans.net and all my fanfiction, hasn’t been seen in a good while. She popped back in to give me the ideas I had in my last post, but not since then. On top of that, I’m finding myself reading less and less, and gaming more and more. It drives me crazy that I’m not picking up a new book every week and anxiously diving into worlds full of mystery, adventure, passion and more. Instead I’m hitting the same four buttons on my keyboard in an anxious attempt to level up so I can hit the same four buttons against slightly tougher enemies.
Why am I doing this to myself? Have I really lost the desire to immerse myself in these worlds? Did my imagination shrivel? What’s going on with me that I’d rather bury myself in the mundane?
Don’t get me wrong. I still love to play the game, but am I burying myself in it for the right reasons? I’ve been going through a lot lately. Personally, work related, family, everything. Am I trying to use this as a way of blocking everything out? I don’t know, but it’s driving me crazy.
I’ve looked for writing workshops around here in Maryland, but all I can find are Community College courses more geared to preparing one for Universities than enabling them to use their imagination to create things of wonder and beauty. Dale, I’m so jealous of this group of people you’ve found to bounce off of. I know I have a few friends who would love to see me write more, and would love to read and review anything I manage to put from pen to page. I need something here, though. A reason to do this, to write, to create.
When my grandmother passed away in July, it spurred fifteen minutes of creativity, and out of my soul poured a song, a chronicle of her life of love, from pen to paper, to guitar and voice. I sang it at her funeral, and it still plays in my head with great frequency. I look at her picture on my desk every day, hoping it spurs something else, but nothing arises. I look at my pride and joy of my imagination, the character “Soul” and nothing. I look at the brilliant idea I had teased at in my prior post, and nothing. It’s like the desire is gone.
I’ve had friends come and go. Fireflyfans.net was my outlet for a very long time, almost like “Cheers” where everybody knew my name, and they were happy to see me. The stories flowed, almost without me trying. The comments and suggestions only fed fuel to the fire and made me want to write more, to improve. That all slowly trickled dry. People wandered away, left to continue their lives elsewhere while I stayed, hanging onto hope that one day everyone would miraculously return and everything would be like it was. Instead, it all changed, and I stayed the same, hanging onto a past that was just that, the past.
So here I am. Call it a crisis, call it dramatic, call it a pathetic attempt to gain sympathy, call it whatever you will. I’ve become a robot, just living, not enjoying. I simply exist in this world, and instead of leaving my mark I’m fading away. It’s almost as if I can’t breathe. I don’t know how to move forward, I don’t know how to deal with change, even though so much of my life around me has become something I no longer recognize.
I NEED TO WRITE. I think, somewhere along the way, I forgot how…
