now that I’m not a writer

It’s been a long time since I felt like a writer. Many books and pieces and blog posts later, after finally feeling comfortable and then embracing the writing side of me, I stopped.

It wasn’t for a particular reason.

I’ve been immersed in different ways and words haven’t been as necessary to keep me balanced, to express my feelings, there wasn’t a need to make as definitive statement to the world, and I guess, to me, that I had things to say.

Having said that, I’ve been talking and thinking about not writing and it seems all that energy about not doing it perhaps means that I should be writing again. So many interesting things are going on: cool projects, awesome people, frustrating politics, kids growing up and out, parents needing taking care of, messy fights for what I believe in, figuring out what’s next . . . the usual stuff.

So I thought I’d come back here, to untangle the complicated strands that are my day to day and share some of them out into the world.

Words matter. Getting them out and letting them go is such a practice. Deep breath. Here I go.

huffpost

Yesterday I got an email letting me know that I was no longer a contributor to Huffington Post. It didn’t look like anything special. In fact I almost threw it away. But I clicked and found that an eight year outlet where I could voice my thoughts, concerns, and ideas was gone.

Door slammed.

I hadn’t written there in a while. While I immersed myself in activism and local politics for the past year, my writing voice has been stifled by all that’s going on. The words haven’t been there. Still a long time option gone is sad.

Change.

Sigh.

Should anyone be interested in the things I used to write about, I thought I post my catalog of musings here:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/author/elissa-652

blocks

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve written anywhere. Writing used to be my salvation, my way of coping, a place to process what was going on in my head, my heart and in the world.

Not these days.

Perhaps too much is going on. The country is a mess. The world seems to be falling apart in too many ways. I’ve got family situations that are both overwhelming and chronic wearing on my soul. It almost feels like examining any of it too closely would open floodgates and then I don’t know what I would do because I don’t know that I’d be able to close them.

And so I waste time on social media. I start lots of books that I don’t finish. There are endless knitting projects languishing in my closet. I don’t cook. My social life has scaled way back. I haven’t been able to dedicate myself to anyone thing for a while.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever will be able to do that again. To find something I feel so deeply about I’m compelled to push through to see how far I can go. I don’t know. I may never know. But I’m hoping that writing about writer’s block will hopefully chip away at this wall so that I can figure out what I should be writing about again.