This has always been my outlet. My therapy. My place to go when I need to go somewhere.
It's always felt quite natural, quite simple.
Open laptop. Look at screen. Type.
Some posts I sit and focus on what I'm reading, and others I just let myself type. And then post. And read afterwards. Those are the therapy type posts.
But recently, it all seems a bit hard. Like there is a blockage in the way.
In my head, they are all there, the posts are just queueing up. All ready written, just needed to be typed up. But my fingers aren't working. The information isn't getting all the way to them, and I don't know why.
It makes me angry. With myself. Because it's like a vicious circle. I write these posts to empty my mind and release whatever is there, but as those posts are not being released they are being clogged up, and I am beating myself up about it, because I am confused and angry, which is then creating more that needs to be released.
This isn't me. It's not me to not be able to write anything.
I had a post in draft. I've been wanting to write it for a year and had the perfect day to write it. Perfect in the sense that there was something on that day that was relevant to the topic of the post and the reason I wanted to write the post.
So for a year I had been wanting to write it. In my head, it was there. All perfect. No longer in draft. I knew it would be one of the ones where I just stare, type, post and then read.
So I sat at the laptop, a week before that date, wanting to type it so I could schedule it. But nothing came out.
A title. That was all.
I wrote a paragraph and sat there and knew it wasn't right. Because it wasn't me writing it. It was too forced. I was having to think about it too much.
And then I felt I had let myself down.
Every day I sat and tried to write that post. I even sat with a notebook and a pen to see if writing it down in that way would be better, but the words were there, I could hear them, I could see them, but my hands wouldn't write them or type them.
I keep thinking "if you're stuck just write about Isle of Man" because I still have SO MUCH I want to share from there but nothing will work.
It's like my fingers are broken. I am lost and my fingers are broken.
I can't accept that this is "just a blog". It's not. It might be to others, and that is understandable.
But to me, this is more.
It's MY place.
I can't just take a break from it. It wouldn't help.
It is too much of a part of me to leave behind, even if for a week or two.
It feels like I am being punished, and I'm not sure what for.
Why am I punishing myself?
I'm trying to find a positive in all of this. And I'm struggling to find any positive at all, other than the fact that it confirms to me how important this is to me.
I need this. I rely on this.
I just need to write.