Finding motivation to write the last month has been impossible.
At work, late May deadlines creep closer and closer. Days in the office lengthen. Stress increases. Dates on my Outlook calendar disappear. I pine for a vacation that seems to never come.
I want—no, I need—time to be alone, to think, to forget everyone else’s problems and focus on my own. I want to feel truly human, to remind myself life has to be more than just a series of succeeding weeks at a desk and weekends at a grocery store or a bar.
My suppressed immune system spent the past two weeks battling a virus. I had to down cocktails of cold medications to persevere through back-to-back meetings, only to come home and crash on the couch to reruns of House, MD and made-for-Netflix British teen dramas.
Motivation in pill and liquid form
Meanwhile, my body and brain are still learning what to do on less than 10 milligrams of prednisone. Systemic corticosteroids make me feel elated, energetic, invincible. For almost a year, I have depended on them, in part, to counteract the fatigue caused by an overactive immune system. As my doctors continue to taper me off, I wonder if I have even been myself the past year. Were the steroids the only reason I was able to maintain a job, a side gig, a new novel, a workout regime, and a blog?
This returning fatigue has left me reaching for lattes, London Fogs, and liquid energizers as I hope that maybe, just maybe I’ll find an evening or a lunch break to pound out a paragraph or three. Hell, this lame Saturday afternoon keyboard confessional was brought to you by Monster Energy Ultra Violet.
Writer’s block: a psychologist’s view
When I work with university faculty, I preach against procrastination and what psychologist Paul Silva in How to Write a Lot calls “specious barriers,” the excuses we make for ourselves for not writing: I need more time. I need to do more research. I need a new computer. I need inspiration.
Silva’s solutions are simple: Schedule the time. Do the research. Buy a new computer.
He forgives the novelists and poets among us—our penchant for plumbing the depths of the human soul, our unspoken goal “to move readers to tears.” He is even so kind as to compare us to “landscape artists and portrait painters.”
I have never been that kind to myself. Writer’s block may be the curse of all who seek to win with words, but I’ve never believed in curses.
Lacking inspiration? Find it, I say.
Need motivation? Brew a cup of afternoon joe.
But then again, maybe I am too hard on myself. Cannot inspiration be found in salacious British high-school scandals?
