Welcome to Psychic Slump

The first draft of this post began “I’ve been visited by the ghoul they deem ‘writer’s block’ for over a year now”.

But because I’ve been visited by the ghoul they deem ‘writer’s block’ for over a year now, I butchered that sentence within an inch of its sad little life, then killed it, and gave up. (Only by a miracle of my agonising corkscrew thinking has it lived to see the light of day…)

Unsure if I can even call what I’ve got writer’s block; the blockage is not by any means limited to writing (wish it was). And it’s really only a symptom of a bigger, rather more concerning, problem, which is that I’m just not that good at thinking at the moment. As the primary owner and user of this brain, I’m officially reporting a noticeable decline in its performance. And so you know I’m serious, it took me probably three minutes of googling to find the word ‘performance’ just now, because I could not think of it myself.

It’s a sticky, frustrating state of mind if I find myself in, this psychic slump. (Not unlike, I imagine, the feeling one might get from having a big wooden box labelled ACME dropped on one’s head from a great height.) Some of the suspected culprits I’ve fingered (not like that) are: the dreaded virus, the computer, the state of things, phone (generally), infinite scroll (specifically), the skulking side effects of omnipresent Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, or perhaps the hundreds of hours I’ve spent watching the women of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City talk themselves, each other and (frankly) me into a state of almost irreparable mania. And, yes, of course, the unlikely possibility of a golf ball-sized growth does also occasionally make the list.

Anyway, it’s all a bit of a mystery. One I’m in pursuit of answers to but in the meantime, I’ve also gotta persist. I have to use this brain, try and trick it to be good again (I’m doing a lot of puzzles, a lot of being in the world, a lot of being off the phone). I persist against all odds to try finishing a second book though I fear very much that it is futile and perhaps crap. Same, too, with the spec script I’ve been “working on”. And with whatever spare quiet time I end up with, I make sure to bully myself relentlessly about all creative shortcomings I can think of.

Can I speak freely? Despite my whining, I do love writing. If we’ve spoken lately you may be surprised to hear this. That is because I have a terrible habit of playing down my relationship to writing whenever I can these days, distancing myself from it either directly or circumspectly. This is for two reasons: one, because I feel uncomfortable and caught out when associating with the vocation of it (writing is something self-important people do, I do not wish to be seen as self-important, due to my fragile sense of self-importance – you see my dilemma, I’m sure) and two, because it is hard to admit both to myself and to others (due to that same pesky self-importance grr) that I am not a good writing factory. Or, worse, that I actually have been a good writing factory at least once in my life but the fact is that I am currently not.

But writing can be wonderful. If you’re really into it, and when it works, it can be the most miraculous thing. A cosmically satisfying method of untangling and sorting the ol’ consciousness caper, of pulling at threads that appear wrapped around old boots and ship wreckages and various other things crowding the ocean floor, and doing everyone the service of bringing them up into the light. It’s a great feeling.

It can also be very painful as we all know, and as I’ve made tediously clear here. The process itself can be painful – choosing the wrong words or ideas and hating them, but you can’t argue with that part. That’s just the way it is. The part I think you can argue with – the part I am attempting to argue with, with the invention of this Substack – is the productivity story we tell ourselves.

I confuse writing for other things, I always have. Except for maybe during the fan fiction teenage years. Otherwise I think I have always believed that writing is nothing if it is not very visible and very quote unquote productive. I think writing is finishing things, showing them to people, getting them published, getting paid, getting the world’s approval, feeling functional and accomplished, yada, yada, yada. Which, I think, goes back to when I was a child… only kidding. But none of that is writing, is it? Nor is it painting or sculpture or music or dance. ‘The work’, if we dare to call it that, is the doing. As up-its-own-arse as that is, it’s the truth, girls. It’s not the thing you show everyone, it’s the thing that happens to you and the world around you as you dig at the work and attempt to uncover it. Whether that be your innermost hurt or like, ‘what is the loudest sound I can make?’. And, after digging and uncovering, if you make it make enough sense for other people to get it and be moved by it (whether they kiss your feet or throw tomatoes), that’s your reward for the digging and the doing. And that’s all.

The realisation I’m stumbling upon at the moment is that I don’t believe I have ever been dropped into the process of making. I’ve always had my eye on the horizon, whether because of deadlines or because of the uncomfortable twinge that comes with looking within, and have always feverishly rushed the making in order to reach the showing. It’s important for me to say this out loud, or write it, because it’s all part of trying to undo the tightly-wound screws within me.

I did think recently: what if in the meantime there was an outlet for all of this half-arsed thinking and feeling? One that – in a perfect world – topples this preoccupation with being ‘good’ or approved of, and instead loosens the screws. One that could maybe then assuage the psychic blockage or relieve elements of it. And, I mean, in lieu of any of that, could simply serve as proof of life: Yes, I am alive, yes I am making stuff, no, I have not completely succumbed to the temptations of watching one-minute videos on the couch until I pass away.

Would be nice too if this was a place to challenge my relationship with internet media (media seems a laughably deficient word for what I’m describing… Eternal sludge? Insatiable parasite? Pocket inferno?). Because as it stands I’m more or less terrified of, and obsessed with, the optics of posting and not posting. Like when to talk, when to be hot, when to be mysterious, when to be vulnerable, when to shout, when to shut up and so on and so on. And I’m sick to death of it.

Some of my favourite recent cultural totems (Ben Pentreath’s blog, ‘Getting Killed’, Amanda Petrusich profiles, Shaad Magazine) make me feel the way they do because of a common quality: an approach to sharing and creating that reminds me of early internet outputs and a freedom I think we’ve lost (or certainly I’ve lost) in this current posting ecology. There’s a bit more humanity, a bit more happy mess. Which inspires me to use this blog as a gym of sorts; a place to make gains. Humility gains.

So if you’re interested please feel free to follow along. And if you’re not, I’m not sure how you landed here but save travels wherever you go now.

Talk soon.