The last two months with the most free time I’ve had have been the least creative and prolific that I have had in the last two years. I eek out four to five hundred words every week and wonder sometimes if the well has just dried up. I wouldn’t call it writers block as much as “just not too much to say.” It’s also not too bothersome, which should be...bothersome.
I alluded to writing a post on routine a couple of weeks ago but like most things during the last two months, I just didn’t. I thought about it somewhere along the way over the following couple (7) weeks but didn’t do anything about it. That lethargy and lack of motivation has pervaded a lot. The waiting of course is why.
It turns out that most of us are stuck waiting and it’s not bringing out the best in us. Sure, some people are trying to create this “new normal” on their own. Like force feeding a toddler broccoli, they scream “I’m alright!” Come join this virtual version of what life used to be like. I’m the toddler. I don’t want any fucking broccoli.
I don’t say this from a point of judging. It just all feels forced and canned, and I can’t fake liking it.
It turns out that we need a future to drive us, and that free time has shined a glaring light on the fact that we can’t just “be present” when the present is the only thing we have. It reminds me we are evermore hinged to our past, and with unknown little to look forward to, we feel a lot of the same anxiety we did “back in February”. Aka. The past.
The future pulls us away from the mistakes and times we felt less. Away from a present we are often just fighting through. The future is an opportunity to do-over. To rewrite. To reinvent. With no future we have no momentum and with no momentum, goals and the things that drive us lose their teeth and we are slipping while standing still.
I heard this quote on This American Life yesterday and I fumbled with the internet of things this morning to find the shows transcripts.
“A present without a future is a life that feels less worth living, because it's a life haunted by a shadow of futility." Damon Linker
This is it exactly.
I’m not trying to be overly dramatic, but this is what the last 60 days or so has felt like. Without knowing the constructs of what’s coming, we wonder, and we wait. And it’s not the good wait, not that “can’t wait for my birthday dinner with friends” type of wait. It’s the “I can’t do anything until someone defines the rules.” That’s the thing that’s bothering me about people jumping to “new normal” their current situation. They are doing so without knowing the rules and it feels forced and gross.
When this all started, artists were flocking to do virtual shows and there were some great ones. I’d hop in an out of a live show of an unkempt singer , too close to the camera, and take note of how many people were watching. With more and more artists doing these shows, I’ve watched that number dwindle. It turns out we mostly don’t want to experience shows that way. We don’t want to take our fitness classes in our dens forever. It turns those experience s into everything else on the internet. Something less than.
We need to know what’s coming to move. Because moving is living. Because you gotta have a plan and it turns out we need something to “on” to apply our keeping to.
Something out there ahead of us to reach for.
#hugsandhi5s
