I can. I can. I can.
Last night I saw a man taking a dump on Park Avenue.
We made unfortunate eye contact for maybe a half-second, and then my eyes slid away from his. That's it. Dassit.
That's the whole 'anecdote'.
***
I was telling a friend a few weeks back, that writing has never really been hard for me. I try not to sound like a wanker when I say this, especially to other writers, but there are few ways to read that except as a not-at-all-humble brag.
You know how people can just... draw? Like, they look at an image – a bowl of fruit, say – and then they grasp the pencil in a really specific way, and a few short scratches later, you can see a fucking bowl of fruit on paper? That's not me. Even stick men are difficult for me. I cannot draw a face that doesn't have dots for eyes, and a dash for a mouth. I just cannot draw. But I can sing. I used to be a soprano when I was a kid, and it was almost effortless. I would open my mouth, knowing the sound I wanted to make, and then I would make that sound. And then I would bow, and walk off the stage.
I am no longer a soprano, but that feeling – knowing what I wanted to do, and then just doing it – is similar to how I feel when I am writing.
I am doing this, I think, when I am writing. I can do this.
I can. I can. I can.
And then I do.
But writing has been hard this month. Logically, I know there are so many factors at play: I moved continents. I currently have access to cable, and television has been my delightful downfall since I was a child. I miss my dentist (I'm not joking). I have spent many hours after work walking around parts of Brooklyn, trying to find a goddamn home to live in. I have been reading a lot for work – and for pleasure (but mostly work). I have been editing. I have fallen even deeper in love with Richonne. And I have been trying, amid all of those things, to take time to breathe, and walk and think and laugh, and look cute (my 30s are being so kind to my skin, man). But it's still a little bewildering for me, to not have the words to hand as soon as I require them. Then again, not-writing isn't so bad, when there are all these other things that will ultimately make me better.
It'll get better soon.
It always does.