Inertia

Inertia has been plaguing me these days.

I thought it was writer’s block.

That is untrue.

There are plenty of thoughts sitting on floats and dog paddling around in there, occasionally bumping into each other. They seem perfectly content waiting for me to let them out. No pressure. Perhaps that’s the issue. I’ve been toying for weeks about what to write next.

Do I share recent teaching discoveries?

Updates on our trip?

Something from my journal that I will have to squint at when I type in an effort to decipher whether that letter there is an “h” or a “k”?

Probably all of the above.

Definitely all of the above.

Starting just requires a motor.

Typing on a keyboard gives me solace in a way that scrolling aimlessly through cyberspace on a phone never could. It’s a tangible experience.

Fingers dance across keys

Clack clack clack.

The words appear and disappear (oh the joy of the backspace key).

I have a strong fondness for watching the text materialize on the screen in front of me. At the same time, I can imagine myself writing these same words with a pen. I think that walk into the imagination helps keep the screen from hurting my eyes.

There have been so many screens lately - classes on Zoom, meetings on Zoom, video conferences through Facebook Messenger, way too many episodes of Law and Order SVU. As an analog person, this is exhausting, but it is also addicting.

I think I've been seduced by exhaustion masquerading as productivity.

Of course, in the face of actually doing things, I don’t feel fatigued. I feel alive and excited, often sweaty. I steer my wonderings through a catalogue of my own invention rather than the endless encyclopedia of images and ads that social media has so generously supplied.

I suppose it’s no surprise that my thoughts choose to stay sequestered on their floats.

I’ve been polluting their water.