Not long after I started writing on here, that I had that hunger pang to write more. More polished, maybe less just a jumble of thoughts, and edit, edit, edit. When I was in NYC the summer of 2023, I wrote tirelessly on a Substack. What happened to me wasn’t sporadic inspiration — I was regulating myself enough through walking up and down Manhattan enough that I wanted to write.
I think, for me, my muses exist in two extreme ends: on one side, the tortured abyss of longing, and the other, when my nervous system is calm. The peril of this scale is that I can’t discern when the latter is happening. I can’t tell when I’m in a good place, I can only tell when I’m wallowing in pain and bleeding from my own hands.
Trying to write lately has been tough, really tough. And in conjunction with all the weird health problems that’s sprung up over this year, I think I’m finally able to diagnose the greater picture: I am not calm, in fact, I’m hating life at the moment. The clarity that came with not wanting to be ambitious anymore, moving out of my downtown space, having a clear directive of moving out of the country… those are all well and good. But the stickler is that I absolutely hate my current living situation.
Is the cheap rent worth it?
Maybe in a year or so I’ll be laughing at all the stupid conflicts that has been floating around this year, I’ll be laughing in Tokyo, far away from a town I hate.
But for now, I have a lot of feelings, and I have purged and restarted a Substack to untangle all the things I think about too much. Without even glancing at what I had written before, I went straight to what Substack labeled “The Danger Zone” and hit delete. It’s time for something new. But when the time came to write, I find myself struggling for words.
I thought I lost the urge to write, but it crept back up on me. It’s insidious and always there, even when I walk away from it every so often. I’ve forced a few things out, and I feel that there’s more underneath, I just haven’t found a way to coax it all out yet. As Solen said, “You’ve gone crazy this year.” I suppose I have, after moving into the cursed house with the cursed housemate, yes, I have gone a little crazy.
The one thing that has been a source of irritation is that I can’t tell what should go on the Substack and what should go here. I suppose the difference is this is like a diary, while that is something I cook up and think about more deeply. Or maybe, I’ll just cross post. There’s no direction to which any of my writing may end up, if most of them survive even. I have weird ways to compartmentalize in ways I can’t even explain.
All I know is, when I feel the urge to write, I’ll just do it.