Of Despair and Writing

Last night I despaired.

It was the whole day in coming.  It built on a work day where I was reminded how far I have not come in my career, at one point fighting with a binder that I needed to three hole punch papers in.  It was compounded when I got home and had dinner and then ate a little more than I should of.  It was added to by the fact that I have been running low on sleep almost since we returned from vacation.

I simply got to the end of dinner and did not have the energy or will to do anything.  Not the studying I had planned to do or the iaijutsu that I needed to do or the workout I wanted to do.  Nothing.  I just sat there missing energy and waiting.

Waiting for what?  Something other than despair about everything at that moment: feeling bad, feeling tire, no energy, nothing.  So in a fit of frustration, I wrote.

I have not written (as in writing for a book) since April and finishing my last texts.  Why?  I am not sure.  I certainly have something I could write about, but with my typical concern about the perfection of the work (I know it can be good) I have put off doing anything about it because (in my mind) no action is better than bad action.  And nothing else has really gotten my creative juices flowing.

So I wrote. It was not anything spectacular - unsurprisingly it was about a person facing despair (creative, no?).  But in the simple act of writing I found a certain relief to my condition.  The mere act of writing and creating gave me a sense of doing something, of taking action - something beyond the fact of what I was facing as I sat there with no energy.

I am trying to do others things better too - get more rest, eat a little better - but it appears I need to write more.  Writing is one activity that, even if I am reluctant to start it and do it badly, makes me feel better as I am doing it.  The creative process seems to tap something beneath my level of despair or depression or unhappiness or whatever it is I am struggling with at the moment and brings the associated sense of creation to the surface.

Today whispers to me that it has the possibility of being like yesterday - but this evening if I am faced with the situation again, I will fight back.

I will write.