Wednesday's post

I should have written this post on Wednesday — my regular blog day — but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I hit that wall all of us have hit/are hitting/can’t stop hitting as we slog our way through the pandemic.

On any given day on Twitter, you can read the tweets of writers/artists/musicians who have been able to publish their novel or create a solo album or any number of examples of MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT. We cheer these people, because even in the best of times that’s a pretty amazing triumph; readers of this blog (and the book) understand how unlikely the making of art is.

The rest of us continue to tweet about our frustrations or failures or inertia.

You might think that the rest of us would be depressed or envious or angry that someone else has succeeded in our craft while we have failed. I can’t speak for the rest of the mob that is the hellsite of Twitter, but I’m not bothered by others’ success. I’m proud of them, glad for them; I feel like Dorothy in the tower of the Wicked Witch, watching Toto escape: “He got away! He got away!”

You might well be wondering why I haven’t blogged about hitting the wall before now. It’s not as if I have been exceptionally productive for the past year. Except for growing my hair out into a magnificent mane, I have accomplished almost zero in the last twelve months. (I did add some random stuff to the Lichtenbergianism store over on CafePress, but struggling with CafePress’s Byzantine UI doesn’t really count as work.)

Mostly I haven’t dwelt on my failure to thrive because that failure is uninteresting. We’re all there; there’s nothing I can say to make a special case out of my wall. Most people have had a far tougher time than I have this year, so if we’re going to start looking askance at comfortable artists who have not parlayed their privilege into New Stuff, then I’m the poster child.

What caused this sudden attack of despondency? Pick one: seasonal darkness; cold weather preventing my being outside; ongoing Captivity with little to no in-person interaction; side effects of new meds; aftereffects of the Covid vaccine (thankfully!); etc. Whatever the cause(s), it was bad.

Therefore, in regards to any particular sadness/grief/whatever that hit me on Wednesday, this post is to say: my heartfelt sympathies to those of you who have been crushed by these feelings on a daily basis, because that dark sense of futility that I felt on Wednesday — no one deserves that.

Here’s to better times and easier art.

Here’s the Assistive Feline™ with her arch-nemesis the Green Rubber Devil Ducky to make you feel better.