Want To Have To

I am feeling a bit uninspired. When I was working on Poem-A-Day I frequently bumped against this problem. Then I would just write something flippant and move on.

That is my reaction to feeling a 'have' to write. Not that this blog is a 'have to'. It is and will hopefully always remain a 'want to'. But sometimes you feel like you have to do something. Even if you set up the situation and control it 100%. Even then, sometimes, you feel it. That pressure. The school work pressure. The deadline pressure.

When I first graduated from college I didn't write for 6 months. 6 very long months where I worried that I would never write again, where I stared at blank pages and dreamed of them drowning me.

I broke out of that period of not writing by forcing myself to write long studies of individual objects. I would stare at something and force the words out. I modeled myself on Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons or Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

In both of those instances the poets took everyday objects and tilted them slightly. They looked until they no longer seemed every day. My poems looked more like Stevens. They sprawled on the page and meandered from their original intents.

But I was writing again.

Right now I am at a point where I am writing a decent amount. I am sending to journals. But I have started a new job and live in a new house in a new state. I am still working out what that means. I am inspired to think about being inspired.

A scene from Midsomer Murders in 2012.

I am thinking about thinking about.

Eventually I will have to look at things again. Begin to dissect again. And I look forward to that. I may wake up tomorrow and be inspired to write 100 pages. I may wake tomorrow and want to watch Midsomer Murders and knit.

And that would be ok too. Unlike me from when I stopped writing after college. Me now is ok with taking breaks. I know it will come back. It always comes back.