the urge, that pesky creative one, is really nagging at me. i can feel it, taste it, the weight of it is an extra heavy thing to carry. it’s an itch i can’t seem to scratch. unable to find my writing groove. reading more of what i want to read isn’t catching my ass on fire. the photographs i take look like the same old photographs i’ve always taken. i’ve even been considering setting up a tiny painting studio in my office — even though i can’t paint a lick. can’t tell it to go the eff away. tried that too. ed jokingly suggested taking up scrapbooking because he knows he can’t really help me find the thing that’s going to fill that gaping hole right now. i know that, but i still look to him with big sad eyes and beg for help.

maybe it’s hormones, i like to think. i’m finally making my descent into becoming that unsatisfiable old lady i always knew i’d be. maybe it’s early onset empty nest syndrome, i wonder. the boys are getting bigger, needing me less, heading out into lives of their own, just like i always wanted. good god, i need to get a life that’s all my own, i whine. i am dyyyyyying, i moan. there really must be a better way. surely i’m thinking too much. doing too little. but it does’t feel like that at all. it feels like i can’t … do … anything and so i mentally beat myself to a pulp about it.

but here’s a thought — and it’s a good, tough one that goes against everything i actually feel — maybe i just need to feel this. maybe i don’t suck because i can’t figure it out right now. maybe i’m not a horrible writer because i’m not writing miraculous prose just like that. maybe figuring it out is the thing i need. figuring it out or learning to sit with it, feel it. endure the discomfort because something it happening, changing, percolating, about to be revealed. maybe i don’t have to think of my insatiable urge as suffering (even if it sure as hell feels like suffering). maybe change and new paths are hard to find and perhaps that’s okay.

i am alive and full of creative energy and i want more. there are many worse things than that.