Struggling to Show Up

I’m struggling to show up in this space. I sit down, with a blank square ready and waiting for my words, but there are none. Throughout the day I think about posts I could write, topics I could tackle, things I could say, but when sit down to write, nothing comes. It’s all tumbleweeds and dust.

I will admit that lately I can’t seem to shake that feeling of, What’s the point? I write the same thing, over and over again, and to what end? Where does it get me? What is point of all those words?

It doesn’t help that I have so little time. Most days it’s simply impossible for me to write. The more days I’m kept from writing when I actually want to write, the more likely it seems I’ll have a hard time writing when I finally have time for it.

I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m not sure why I’m writing this. Maybe if I put it out there the problem will dissipate? Or maybe if I tear these 200 words from myself and force them onto the page I will feel I’ve won in some small way.

Whatever my reason, I’m writing this. And I suppose that’s something.

Do you ever have a hard time writing?

How do you conjure words when it seems there are none?

14 Comments

  1. I sometimes have a hard time writing. If I don’t have anything interesting to say then sometimes I will just post a picture or look in my draft folder. If I think of a topic I do try to at least send myself a note on what i was thinking about so that I can flesh it out later.

    1. I have a whole page in notes with possible topics to write about. Most of the time I wait so long they don’t feel relevant to my life anymore, but there are times when I pick something from the list and just write it, come what may. I think one of my problems is I want to write about things well, and that can deter me. Maybe I just need to set a goal to write, and I can get past the writing things well.

  2. “Do you ever have a hard time writing? ” Ha! Definitely. I, too, think of ideas for blog posts throughout the day—and eagerly await a change to write them down. But when I actually have a moment to sit down and get the thoughts on the page, I’d rather do anything else. Maybe its just that I’m exhausted at the end of the day, which is the only time I can spare 20-30 minutes. It’d be nice to create a morning writing practice but I already get up at 5:30 to either work out or catch up on work.
    I also get the “what’s the point” feeling a lot lately. I have ideas, and then I realize I’ve probably already written those things before, because I feel like my life is on a never-ending loop with the same damn issues coming up in a pattern over and over again. As soon as one problem seems to have improved, the other one rears its head, and then the first problem returns. Its like a game of whack-a-mole! And I don’t think its interesting to anyone anymore.

    1. I DEFINITELY write about the same things over and over again. When I was looking back through my February 2012 posts I found one about my daughter hitting me and then there was another post about her hitting me right when I closed that blog down last summer. And now I want to write about it again! Because, yep, still hitting me. It’s the same thing every time I write about it. What’s the point in going over it again and again?

      I love your whack-a-mole analogy. It is absolutely like that. Right now my house is clean but I’m drowning in paperwork at school, things are good on the friendship front but my marriage feels neglected. But all the topics are always the same, no matter what is at the top of the wheel and what is at the bottom, it’s the same. Blerg.

  3. That you write makes a difference in your reader’s lives. But you aren’t really writing ‘for’ us but for you. I have no right to your attention even though you improve my world and enlarge my perspective. Thank you for writing, for being a good parent, a person who struggles and improves their world, a good partner, a person who normalizes the work involved in relationships, a good teacher, a person who invests from their own life to help others learn. Thank you for who you are.

    1. Awwwww, thank you. Your words are like cool water for my dehydrated soul. They mean so much to me.

  4. I was thinking about the cyclic nature of life, that we face the same few things over and over again, because we now have a feisty 2 year old who WANTS TO DO IT HERSELF and I can so clearly see her at 14 saying just that same thing and being loudly opinionated (and I see echoes of me doing the same as a teen). I mostly think that the rehashing isn’t boring or futile but needed as a way to attempt to perfect our response to whatever it is. The reality is that we are probably never done with self-improvement and documenting the same stumbling blocks over and over is life. The reality of life illuminated is what I appreciate in what you write.
    As to if I find it hard to write, yes. Often I get lost in my head and nothing gets written and I don’t know who I am anymore. Sometimes it is years with nothing to write because I have judged myself so worthless as to silence myself, sometimes it’s because I only have a few words over and over again and I think it’s useless to repeat myself. Now I’ve decided that the repeating is important too because with time and repetition I either see patterns that I can act on or variation creeps in and the repeated stuff becomes new over time.

    1. I appreciate your perspective on this–that rehashing things can help us see patterns over time. I should go back and look through the hitting posts and see if any patterns emerge; mostly I have just been depressed that this is STILL an issue so many years after it started being an issue. I would have thought she’d have out grown it by now.

  5. Glad you are still writing! I kept a writing log for the dissertation, and it helped me a lot – even just jotting down my goals for the day, and a place to dump random thoughts that I wasn’t sure where else to put. It was a good way to get started. I feel like content and style are less important than the energy that you put into it – the authenticity. I’m glad you are writing.

    1. I hope you are write about content and style not being as important as authenticity. It’s hard for me to embrace that way of thinking, but it would help me if I could.

  6. Oh yes, I frequently lose my writing mojo. I have a document where I keep all my posts and all my drafts, and all my suggested topics. I have dozens of unfinished, and at times unstarted ideas. And sometimes, like today, I just can’t write anything. I’m pleased to see though you’ve reverted to one of my favourite topics – losing my blogging mojo! I’m also always in awe of the fact that you are so busy, but you always manage to write. So give yourself a break, and don’t expect too much of yourself if you feel you have to force it.

    Alternatively, have you thought about giving yourself a challenge to keep within a length restriction? My first blog was a daily post in only 44 words. I also like Mel’s #MicroblogMondays. It keeps me posting but with a maximum eight sentences, I don’t have to write a novel.

    1. I have thought about giving myself a length restriction, but I think that would actually take LONGER for me, because shortening my writing is so hard for me–I would end up writing as much as I usually and then spend extra time cutting. I do think it would be a valuable exercise for me as a writer, but it wouldn’t be a way to save time.

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