What Did I Come in Here For?

So I’m sitting and staring at the screen, and trying to remember just what I did over the past week. And I can’t think of a single thing. Not one. I mean, I know I did stuff. I wrote — my totals changed. I went grocery shopping. I exercised. I did my daily tarot pull, and I cleaned. My daily bullet journal shows I did all that.

I just don’t remember any of it. The past week is a blur.

I imagine it’s because I did much the same thing last week as I did the week before that… and before that… and before that. It’s been a long, weird pause, and it’s all blending together in my head. Things are all soft and smudgy and indistinct, like trying to see through the fog we’d have some mornings on the way to school.

No fog these days. At least, not so I would notice. My commute these days is up the stairs to make sure someone is in class on time, and down the stairs to exercise, then up the stairs after breakfast and shower to get to writing.  My house is too climate controlled for fog.

Has anyone else noticed that they’re more tired these days? And busier than they were when we were all going out and doing all the things? I think it’s because we’re trying to fill the gaps with distractions, and exhausting ourselves in the process.  That, and we’re exhausted just from the sheer weight of the uncertainty surrounding us.

I’m hearing from a lot of creatives that it’s been really hard to write/draw/do anything since quarantine started.  Even if you have time to sit, and no immediate distractions, all of the Muses seem to be in their own quarantine, and they’re not sharing our bubble.

How do you keep the creative juices flowing, when there’s so much going on?

For me? It’s one word at a time. Some days, it’ll take me all day to make 200, 300, 500 words. Some days, I won’t make that at all. Some days — usually the days I have Circlet Writing group — I might just make 1500 in two hours, because peer pressure is a thing, and it’s a thing that can actually work to your advantage if you use it right.

I have found that I have to keep writing or the demons win. The demons in my head, that is. It’s the same reason I exercise. It calms the brain weasels and allows me to function. So if I exercise, I’m more able to focus. And if I write, everything else will be okay. Because I know that the characters in my books are guaranteed that happy ending. So if I give it to them, maybe I’ll get one, too? Maybe we’ll all get one?

Sympathetic magic is also a thing, after all.

I’m not the only one thinking this, or something like it. Romance sales are going gangbusters. Because right now, we all need that happy ever after, even vicariously. We all need to escape.

We all need that little bit of magic. That little bit of hope.

49 days to the election. Vote Blue. We need the hope.