Why I Don’t Write More

A visual representation of my constant physical and mental state.
Drawn by my girlfriend whose social media I would post to expose her art to my enormous and diverse audience, only she doesn’t really have any places to which I could link because she’s all too aware of the limitations of her own productivity.
We all have our demons.

Today started out unusual: I didn’t feel wretched.

Physically and mentally, I didn’t feel wretched. I didn’t feel perfect, by any means, but a slew of issues that normally plague me had desisted: I didn’t have a steady throb of weariness just behind my brow, the one that usually emanates into my eyes and makes me feel sluggish. Moreover, my muscles felt fresh, and when I did push-ups or pull-ups, my entire body didn’t turn hot, my skin didn’t erupt with prickles, and my lungs did not strain with only the first few. Oh, the push-ups weren’t necessarily easy, and I didn’t feel hyper-alert, but that’s still the point: I felt quite normal, or what I rather expect is normal, having so rarely experienced this state myself.

I work from home, starting at 7am every day and ending at 3pm. It took several hours, but around roughly 1pm I began to feel all the old symptoms again, albeit less intensely than usual. After 3pm I shut down my computer, watched approximately fifteen minutes of a Youtube video, went to use the bathroom, and when I returned I resolved to sit and begin writing despite feeling imperfect. I recall saying to myself, “I’m choosing to write because even if I don’t feel like doing it, I don’t feel bad. I feel good enough to make the choice to do it, unlike usual, where it feels beyond my capability to even try—or where I know that even if I try, I’ll fail, because a certain level of mental energy is required to be creative and thoughtful.”

About ten or twenty minutes into the endeavor I had put down perhaps no words at all, I had only reread what I already had, and begun to consider how to proceed, and it was somewhere around this point into this perhaps overly optimistic attempt that I could feel the weariness in my face and eyes and brow and head. The tension in my neck. The complete destruction of will.

I looked at my blankets just to my left, piled into a plush mound where I’d tossed them that morning to get them out of the way of my receiver so I’d have line of sight from my desk across from it. I wanted nothing more, I remember saying to myself, than burying myself like a grub-worm into those blankets and hibernating for a year.

So I did.

Admittedly it didn’t take a year, and I eventually popped out to lay my head on my pillow like a normal person, but there I lay for perhaps an hour, drifting in and out of a comfortable but shallow slumber.

At one point I internally assessed myself, because I had already resolved to write today, and I wanted to write, despite my own lethargy, and I concluded that I still felt an aggressive exhaustion, an exhaustion that seemed almost sentient, one that insisted I do nothing. “You are tired! You are not able to do anything useful! Don’t bother! It’s over! Feel me, feel me throbbing in your head! It’s completely pointless to get up now.”

I might as well stay here until I’m “done,” I thought to myself. Clearly I’ll get nothing done if I drag myself from the comfort of my bed now.

I waited longer, perhaps only ten minutes. When I could no longer drift to sleep, and when I had become too restless to continue lying there, I lifted the blankets and went to the lavatory, peed, swished some mouth-wash to remove the inevitable flavor of bile that seems to permeate my mouth whenever I take naps, and came back into my room.

I opened my writing laptop, intending to start writing because although I don’t feel great, much of that oppressive weariness has melted away, leaving me capable, if not enthusiastic.

I thought to myself then, “I’d like to tell Lexi”—that’s my girlfriend, AKA, Kitten—”about this experience.”

My first inclination was to express it in prose, perhaps because I’m feeling more creative than I thought, or maybe because it feels too complex to state in the mundane language of our day, or perhaps I had a desire to give the feelings a creative catalyst through which to truly convey the depths of their significance.

And now here we are. All of my day leading up to this very moment where I’m typing these words, even as I consider how to end this article, and wonder furthermore what lesson or information I have imparted with this foray into my frustrating life.

Well, I hope you got something out of this, if nothing more than an anecdote to which you can relate.