This is my favorite weather. It’s a light rain, not the driving winds that send water to the earth at a 45° angle. There’s a ton of birds out this morning, and I’m sat on the patio waiting for my favorite finches to make an appearance at the tree that sits across the sidewalk from me.

It’s my ideal morning.

I’m on the patio, with an iced coffee, and there’s trees and rain and birds and I wouldn’t change a thing, my laptop is open, my document is open, and… nothing.

A year ago, I was slinging 2,000 words a day before my real job, and that’s the thing I don’t want to look at. I was smug about it. Writer’s block wasn’t real. Motivation wasn’t real. You just… did it. It was routine.

And then I stopped.

I told myself it was just for a week-long vacation, (there’s the finches!), that I needed the rest, that I’d been burning the candle at both ends for so long–years, if I’m being honest–that my body genuinely just needed a break.

The next week, I went back to work. I didn’t go back to writing.

I didn’t go back the week after that.

Or the next.

Or the next.

A whole month had passed. Surely, that was enough time.

I stopped checking my writing email. I missed a deadline for something I thought I had already submitted. The Big Guy took away my pre-order privileges for a year, and I didn’t even have the energy to fight it. I made less than the year before, which was already a truly pitiable amount.

A drag path, but it’s just the trail of pennies being deposited into my bank account every month.

One month turned to two, to three, to “I’ll start in the new year,” only we’re at the end of April now. I’ve done little tidbits here and there, sure. I’ve got one long-standing labor of love I’ve been writing by laptop and typewriter and hand since probably 2011. But it’s the end of April, now, and I haven’t consistently done 1,000 or 2,000 or ANY amount daily since

July

August

September

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

Two whole hands. It’s been almost a year. My moonlight career is out here looking like Bella Swan’s worst semester. I feel terrible, but I don’t go back.

I don’t understand why this is happening. I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. I hope someday, maybe in a few years, I’ll look back on this time with wisdom and experience and a shit-ton of compassion, because oh lord do I need it.

I’m in the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had, and I just can’t bring myself to scribble out romance anymore. Now that I’m in the happily ever after, it’s like I can’t describe what it feels like to long for it with your whole body. (There are plenty of married romance writers. I don’t think this is the real wrench in the gear.)

I started this blog–paid for the website and everything–because I wanted to at least pretend to myself that I was taking myself seriously. I don’t even know what taking myself seriously looks like anymore.

It feels like everything has to change, but I don’t know how. I’m afraid the sunk cost fallacy is going to eat me alive. I’m afraid of making the wrong choices. I’m afraid of running out of time.

I’m afraid I already have.

I’m afraid I’m demonically possessed, that the abusive relationship I fled broke something in me permanently, which is something I can write on a basically anonymous blog because I’m sure as hell not talking about it to people in real life.

I keep trying to carve out writing time, and I spend that time not writing. Wanting to be writing, but constantly turning away from it.

I’m beginning to think there’s something else I should be writing. Maybe there’s a room in my heart house with a padlocked door that needs busting open. Maybe sunlight will pour in the way I want words to pour out.

And there’s so much bullshit, so many beliefs in my mind floating around, and I don’t know which ones are real (confessing this has tears welling up), and I don’t know which ones are mine, and I don’t want my whole life to be ruled by fear but admitting anything to anyone feels like an invitation to have my soul ripped apart, and maybe there is some truth to the idea that creatives are too sensitive to function because I’m catastrophically sensitive to everything right now, and I’m sure as shit not functioning.

Part of me wants this to be a private journal entry now, but I can’t stomach it. This is so much part of the process, this constant wanting of something that’s not fitting, and not knowing how to make space for it in your life. I love my life the way it is, but I just want more. I want to be doing more even though I feel like I have too much on my plate, and I can’t tell if I want to stretch my capacity in order to grow or if I want to break myself because that’s just what I was trained to do.

I want to write. I just don’t know if I want what I need to write to come out.

All my love, past, present, and future,

BH<3