When you’re content, write it down.

I read those words yesterday and my mind has been racing ever since. I often struggle to find any words at all when I am caught up in a series of unfortunate events, yet when the stars are aligned and I am in that elusive flow state, words pour from my fingertips faster than I can think.

Sometimes, in the very darkest of seasons, I turn to writing as a kind of centering practice, because clearly I associate writing with a certain brand of homeostasis. Somewhere in the desperate searching for a sensible sentence or two, I manage to find even the most narrow pathway back to myself.

It is when I’m faced with what I suppose to be ordinary challenges, or perhaps slightly out-of-the-ordinary-but-not-altogether-dismal circumstances that I struggle the most to put words together. Also, when I’m lazy.

I think this particular dry spell is a combination of the two, compounded by the variable of summer break. And end-of-year reports, ahem.

Reading, on the other hand. I just can’t get enough at the moment. I picked up a memoir from our local library, a collection of essays about coming of age alongside technology, written by the gal from whom I lived across the hall Freshman year at NYU. And now, her wit and knack for constructing a clever turn of phrase is preserved within a volume of her own making. Magic.

The moral of this phenomenal piece of nonsense is that when writing feels difficult, I have a choice to either work through it or wait. By constantly choosing to wait, I am also choosing for writing to not be my work.

Time to make a different choice.