Day 71: Commitment

The night is hot. The city sleeps below me. I stand at my window half-dressed and look out on the many gleaming lights in the distance, each one a life, a world, a story, and I think how much I want to quit.

Today has been a day when my commitment to writing has been tested. I've felt low and empty, drained out, tired, worn thin. I'm exhausted from my day job -- I slogged up the hill a few hours ago, made it to the shop with enough energy left to pick up an own-brand oven pizza -- the self-service checkout was in need of rebooting and took an aeon to register every move -- and I stumbled home with the light fading and made my pizza in the gloom, ate in my room alone, tried to write but couldn't keep my eyes open, my brain was stretched taut, my feet throbbing, and I had to crumple into bed and nap for an hour and then drag myself back up just now despite every cell in my body screaming out for rest. I feel like that checkout, everything sluggish, needing a hard reset.

The only other writing I did today was before work, still groggy from not enough sleep after last night's bar shift and then blog, and this is my life, and this is all I have. And the writing was dumb and painful and prosaic, and I felt like I have nothing of worth to transmit, no ability to create. I fight this mental health that every day is crushing me and it feels like the only rewards for doing so are more days in which to be crushed again.

But this is the commitment I've made. To write no matter what. To write when it's good, when I'm flying, when I allow creativity to express itself in unique ways through me, and creativity in turn lifts me up and takes me outside of myself, and we soar together, to lands strange and wonderful and new.

But also to write when nothing comes, when every word is difficult and painful and frustrating. When we're lost in the wilderness just taking one clumsy step at a time and after five hours we find we've gone in a circle and we're back where we began, having discovered nothing.

This is the relationship. This is the reality.

And, boy, do I choose it.

Everything, I think, has these moments. Every pursuit, activity, calling, has these days. What you need to do is find the activity where, during these godawful times, you still look at yourself and think this is where I belong. Where when the going gets tough you put your head down and you find some way, do whatever it takes, to get through it, because you'd rather anything than lose this glorious tender thing that you sometimes have; whatever it is, whatever it means.

So that's me tonight. Stumbling on, uncertain, wounded, battered, but knowing I'm right where I need to be.

And now that's written and there's somewhere else I need to be. Specifically: bed.

Good night.