Since I spent a good portion of the summer finishing, in fits and starts, the manuscript I started during lockdown last spring, I've taken October mostly off from writing--choosing what I want to work on next. It occurred to me I could probably just stop writing forever and maybe no one would even notice--ridiculous of course, but it jives with a certain amount of burnout I am feeling, that doesn't necessarily have to do with writing at all, or the press, or any of the creative work I do, but is filtering in from other completely unrelated things. I started some fiction exploits around the beginning of the month, to loosen up the gears, but while they were okay, I couldn't help think if I am going to write, I'd much rather be writing poems.
Sometimes, I look at my work and try to summon something. My teen self just beginning to scribble verses that I dared call poetry. The excitement I felt when I first began writing poems that were good. First acceptances--both print and online. My first fan letter. My first chapbook. My first book. My first reading in public. The way sometimes I re-read things and they feel really good. It's a kind of magic, but I can't always summon it. I vascillate between feeling like I write too much, or sometimes not enough. That I am constantly putting too much out there. That more reserved, less constantly churning poets seem to get more readers. Am I too much? Am I too little? Is everyone sick of me? Am I sick of my own voice? Is it gross to be all "look at my poems!" while people are still struggling en mass. Granted, I also feel like my poetic world has gotten smaller--especially with the pandemic--even though I only occasionally socialized with poets or read my work. I have less perspective. Social media is quieter. Conversations scarcer. The people who are on social media use it differently now, though I can't really explain how.
Sometimes, it seems like you walk into a room, put yourself out there, your work, and the crickets are deafening. I don't know if it's a shift in medias, a shift in attention spans. Obviously everyone is crawling under their skin for all sorts of reasons. We are not alright, even those of us who seem to be holding together at the seems. I try to summon the girl who had such enthusiasm for everything--for reading her work and others, for submitting poems, for sharing her work and I cannot get back there. It's by no means all about poetry, but I feel it there most accutely since it's such a vast divide. Is it a middle age thing? A mid-life poetic crises? Is it a stage in my life? Or a stage in all our lives? I keep reading headlines about the "mass resignation." How the pandemic shifted our goals and priorities. Sometimes it feels like the pause--the shock of something like this even happening in our lifetimes--left us a little broken in many ways and deciding how to put the pieces back together. So much in the months before was routine and habit and the rolling that once set in motion just keeps going. As we put things back together, what do we take with us? What do we leave?
On other fronts that may mean leaving a job where you are underpaid and overworked. But writing is not usually paid at all anyway--so any questioning of your endeavors doesn't make that much sense in a bottom line type way. While at times, it seems easy to not write, at others, it seems impossible to stop. Where do the words go? Where do you hide the stories? When I was in my twenties and thirties, I wanted to always make sure that I was living the exact life I wanted--whatever the consequences-- but even that seems to be something you question. I once dated someone who was having a mid-twenties crisis over choosing to study mechanical engineering. I smugly thought, in my late thirties I was beyond such questioning. I had traded career and financial security, but my life was creative and interesting. I listened to him, but secretly acknowledged that I had chosen the right life. Now I'm not so sure.
Obviously, I won't stop writing--but it frightens me a little that it's even an option. So easy an option. Stopping being a poet is far easier than becoming one. And that is fucking scary.
