Awkward writing about not writing

It's weird to write here at least three but often four to five times a week since 2011 then to abruptly stop doing so in March, like most other things abruptly stopped. To know I can come and do that, to want to do that, to think about doing that, but to end up most days not doing that. 

My friend Janet commented on one of my post shares on facebook asking if she was missing posts or if I wasn't sharing them as frequently. It got me thinking why I'm not showing up here. 

All of my fellow bloggers know one of the things I hate is when bloggers are like omg so sorry I haven't been showing up to this little space ugh, fucking gross. No one cares. 

That is true in this case also, but I have been working through why I'm not writing. It is a huge part of who I am and what I do, and always has been. I have always been writing to myself, as early as I can remember. Stupid things like what I wore that day and what I thought about x. I don't care if the writing is good or has a point, and once I started putting it out publicly on this blog, that held. This just happens to be where I write now. I don't know why I am interested in capturing absolute minutia, but it makes me happy. It's comforting. It gets out what I need to get out, even when it's awkward like this is. 

This has been the place I've shared so much shit, and not all of it is pretty or interesting or consequential. This has been how I've publicly journaled a lot of what I'm doing - which I still do, because TWTW and Thursday Thoughts are about the only things that have by and large survived the coronavirus - but I've stopped capturing a lot of the little things. No one is missing a post about how the light frames my porch in the early evening, but I miss writing that. It's not about what I'm not sharing with the world. It's about hiding from myself. 

At first it was a lack of creativity, from pandemic brain, and I had to save whatever I had for work. That is still the case a little, and it is absolutely also an issue of I don't want to stare at any screen for another minute, but it's also an issue of existing in a state of self-induced task oriented days to avoid thinking and feeling too much. 

Because I've stopped capturing a lot of the big things too, and part of that is how many times can I write about the same shit. Even if it is shit that really, really matters. That I should at least write about in how it relates to my thoughts and feelings, because I am not the same as I was in March. None of us are. I don't want to miss out on this version of myself because it's too exhausting to look at the world around me. 

Like what a mindfuck this pandemic world continues to be, in a roller coaster fashion, so that I'm feeling fine and then, as my friend Lisa said in a comment on IG, something triggers it and it rears its ugly head. None of us have lived through a global pandemic before. We don't know how to be or feel. We don't know what the fuck we're doing. 

The country burning, literally and figuratively, is something I can barely even mention in Thursday Thoughts anymore. I remember back in 2016, telling myself to just pace myself and not get outrage fatigue. I've had that a million times over. No matter what happens people still support an administration that does really fucking terrible shit daily, either in an aggressive fashion like performing hysterectomies on women they have detained in squalid cells or in a silent but deadly fashion like disbanding every damn law and rule and practice that protects the environment or deals with any way in the climate crisis and we all suffer. Writing about that is either shouting into an echo chamber or talking to a wall. No one who likes donald trump or the hideous conservative agenda we entered starting back in the tea party years gives a fuck about anything I say, they just want to win over the libs at all costs. 

And the cost is so fucking high. I see the strain on my face from all of it every time I look in the mirror. I see the strain on the faces around me, masks or not. A lot of it is in the eyes and the brow. 

I spent much of 2018 talking about MFD's run for office, and the toll it was taking on all aspects of our lives. I have spent the past few months avoiding writing about that, but that does not mean the strain is not there. 

Many days I feel like I am traveling along a long road of fine lines to not push myself over the million edges we're all walking along right now. I know many people feel the same. I see you out there. 

I have spent years talking about registering to vote, and actually voting in every election (not just presidential), and being involved in the community and how to get involved on a local or national level with making a change if you want to see one. How to register to vote if you have never registered, whether you are 18 or 49. How to help in the next under 50 days if you don't want to make phone calls or knock on doors. Whatever you want to do or are interested in, please email me. I am happy to talk to anyone at any time about any of these things. How can I help you help? 

I need to show up for myself somehow in this space, because not doing so feels like I am missing. This is a foray into that. If you happened to read it, hi, and happy Wednesday (right?), and how are you?