Hunh...

 So at 4 AM this morning I thought to myself...

"Am I just not a writer anymore?"

I'm behind on the number of blogs I need to average for my goal. I'm really behind on fiction pieces. I'm not even in the running for submissions. And normally that would light a fire under my fingers and I'd be sitting in here every day force choking words out until they flowed freely again. I'd be researching quick submissions I could do to get those complete. I'd be reading writing prompts for inspiration. But I haven't been.

I have a couple of friends who are doing Inktober and I thought this morning that maybe I could steal their list and turn them into prompts. I could either just start with day 10 or I could do one big post incorporating the previous 9 prompts or I could double up on posts for a few days to catch up or I could just forget the whole thing because meh...

And that's sort of how I've felt about writing lately. Meh. I could...but then again I could not. 

That's not normally how writing feels to me. Normally it's a drive. If I've got a ton of ideas I can't get them out fast enough to be happy. If I have no ideas I feel adrift like I'm missing a piece of me. Even when I went through the really dark 2016 time I felt like I wanted to be writing. I just had nothing in the tank to give to do it. 

So I had to wonder, "Am I just not a writer anymore?"

Have I lost that spark? That drive? 

Of course this seems like a weird thing for you to be reading, that I think I'm not a writer anymore, because obviously, I wrote this. 

Yeah, I know.

And all I can say is that the part of me that wants to still keep goals in reach is overriding the part of me that is like why force myself to continue to do something that I've lost the drive to do?

And I feel like I should want to write. I feel like I must want to write and I'm just somehow not in touch with it right now. I feel like I want to feel like I should feel something I don't feel. Feel me?

I mean, come on, if I was a writer I could have figured out how to make that make sense, right? 

I read an on this day post in my feed from when I LIKE BEER was made a Justice on the Supreme Court. It was really good. One of those posts where other people copied it and reposted it because it just put things out there in a way that a lot of people were thinking but hadn't been able to articulate. And as I read it I thought...when was the last time you wrote something like that? Or even wanted to write something like that? And I don't know. Now, sure, I've been avoiding the news and ignoring the constant drumbeat of "be angry" that you get from the media. So maybe that's it? Maybe without the constant simmering of righteous anger I have no spark. 

Or maybe it's because the things I think about posting, about Covid and the assholes who are making this so much worse, just seem harsh instead of insightful. FUUUUCCCK YOU!!! Just doesn't seem copy and paste worthy, right? 

Or maybe because the things happening in my life right now are super specific to my life. Like do you really want to hear about house hunting? 

And maybe that's it. It's not that I've lost my drive to write but I've lost the feeling that what I'm writing about matters? 

Nah. That never stopped me before. I've written about the most ridiculous things in the past. 

I don't honestly know what it is. 

But I felt like I at least owed you this piece so if you were wondering what was going on you know it's not just you. I am wondering that as well.