Wanting To Spin Yarn

Writer's freeze, funk, or fizzle - follow the thread to the ball of knots which is it's origin and you'll always find a degree of fear in the tangled skein.  That's where I've been lurking for the past month or so.  Despite suffering through some sort of stomach bug (or maybe in part, due to it) from right after Thanksgiving up to just before Christmas I was able to blog even beyond my once-a-week personal minimum goal.  Then, we started our 2012 school semester late due to waiting on the departure of our college-age son as he headed back to school; a week in we got hit with rounds of colds which some of us are still struggling with four weeks later.

Why all the wah! wah! explanation? Because I've had to tell myself this repeatedly for the past few weeks in order to try to feel ok about not writing, and I now feel compelled to get it all off my chest right off the bat in this post.  (Aarrgghh - a mixed metaphor!)  With a depressingly low level of writing sent out into the blogosphere, I'm feeling rather stunted.  In the shower the other morning, I berated myself aloud, "You said 'line of cosmetics' twice in your one short little review piece you've managed to get out."  Really, the Nyquil should have worn off by now and my mind should be clearer.  I have no excuses, no real ones, I suppose.  Just a real life.

It must be the season for sputtering thoughts and intentions, though.  In perusing a few blogs, I've seen a number of posts belaboring resolutions and goals already derailed.  Writing, exercising, drawing, beginning or getting better at something.  At first I refused the company of other failures (I apologize right now for my snootiness), but after a while I just had to lean into it, lay down my head and suck my thumb.  It's not the end of the world, and I'm being a big baby when all's said and done. Things haven't gone exactly as planned - again - and that's alright.  It really is.

I'll end this little note by sharing another fellow blogger's encouraging answer to her writer's block: http://write2ignite.com/2012/02/01/cure-for-creative-funks/  Good for her, I say.  For me, I'm just grateful for what I have been able to keep going - namely dinners, reading, schooling, family relationships, and prayers - and trust that writing will come more readily once again when its meant to.

It's funny how the mind works, I began with the image of a big ball of yarn and now the knitting term "casting off" came to mind.  To cast off is to bind and end your project.  I think I'll cast off my fear of a terminal barrier to my literary exercises and scribblings now and carry on.

Linked at We Are That Family and Simple Lives Thursday