Writer's Block is Just a Fancy Prison Term for Solitary Confinement

 I'm feeling unmotivated. Uncreative. I've got nothing to say. 

This is a terrifying place for someone like me. As a member of that untouchable social class of Aspiring Writers (always aspiring, never a spire), I lack a few key things. 

First, I haven't yet established a real rhythm to writing. I write in spurts, in the corners of my day. Writing doesn't pay the bills, and time spent writing is time away from my wife. I need to want it to actually do it, and often I end up wanting to do other things instead.

Second, I don't have a body of work. I've got a mythical briefcase stuffed with paper fragments, some loosely held together with themes but mostly just a jumble of individual bits of prose that make me smile. 

Lacking these fundamental things, a dearth of motivation can be deadly for my Aspirations. 

When there's no rhythm, habits are powerless against laziness or competing priorities. When there's no body of work, a momentary pause can raze the piecemeal confidence that I might have constructed. And so begins a spiral: sitting down to write, fitfully starting sentences that are immediately erased, giving up in frustration, feeling worthless, thinking that maybe I should just stick to what I'm good at, and then losing myself in a streaming binge. 

A pause becomes a space becomes a drought becomes a desert. Months later, I jot something down and smile about it, and the Aspiring Writer is reanimated. 

A lack of inspiration is a painful journey inward, a stroll into insecurity and pain that lies hidden beneath the surface. It's just solitary confinement, a walled-off cell away from other voices, my own voices. And it's all self-imposed. 

So today, I fling open the barred doors of my cage to continue Aspiring. Today, I get past writer's block by writing about writer's block.