Hm, to starting writing scares me to death. I suppose it is because of that door in my brain that has to be opened in order to pay attention and produce some text. If I open it, I’m positive all of those monster thoughts lurking in there’s gonna want to come out, and I would rather they didn’t.
After a couple of disease- and death- infested years in my family, I sort of shut down for a while. Not as in “I’m sorry, I haven’t been blogging for a while”, but as in, “I haven’t written a word nor read a book in months”. It was as if my whole system’s hung itself, as if my OS suddenly was running to many emotionally laden programs at once, and that innocent-looking, colourful wait-a-moment-wheel started spinning, and just wouldn’t stop.
But I have such a privileged situation at the moment! How is it even possible to throw that away? Why haven’t I tried harder to take advantage of living on a new exciting continent, with grant money, with super interesting people, options and projects all around me? Why? Well, the disturbingly simple answer is that I didn’t care much. I could sort of think that I should care, but then that thought fell out of my mind too, as everything else. From being quite wound up and stressed about my parents health, about not working enough, about not getting out enough or getting enough sleep, I fell into a languid apathetic attitude where I couldn’t care less about anything. I got five (five!) parking tickets in a month; I missed or was late to basically every appointment – those I didn’t cancel that is. I even became a sloppy driver, ending up in two potentially quite bad situations. Not that I wanted anything to happen, I just wasn’t paying attention. That felt kind of bad though, and my uncle had me promise to wake up and slow down. And to pay attention! Time flew by without me noticing, and I bought a wristwatch that would beep every hour, to remind me of the flow of time. It was quite a smart thing actually, but then I lost it, as I wasn’t paying much attention to my things either.
In hindsight it is difficult to say how or when it started – I don’t remember much of it to be honest- or how come I succeed in breaking my silence today. But I’ll be sure to find out. And when I do, that knowledge, in combination with some sharp deadlines, some rewards for success and dreadful punishment for fails, I’ll be on the right track. 2011 is supposed to be the year of initiative (or the Nike year – just do it!) and here and now, I promise to do it; to pay attention, reboot – several times a day if necessary, to pay attention, and start writing. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything more to contribute with, even if only a knitting pattern.
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