I've been so plagued by writer's block lately, there's so much in me screaming to get out and I feel like I have no power to express it, no means of sharing the pain and the disgust and the love and the hope and the all-consuming fatigue that have defined the past year. I used to have so little to say and so much ability to say it. I feel like I've taken a long journey to gather stories to tell and now I'm home and I have no voice.

I was looking through my old journal entries, trying to figure out when I stopped having anything to say here, and I came across my very second entry since I ended my hiatus, posted right about a year ago. It feels, to me, extremely characteristic of the time just after Ben's death, when I was determined to live life and appreciate people while they were still here, when I spent every weekend getting trashed, when I had just relearned enthusiasm and all the bitterness and ennui that had plagued me before were gone and unlamented.

This is the meat of that entry:

I meant to mention why my life is so intrusive. Between my full-time job making toys for the USMC (I have just blown my cover, in case anybody still cares!) and my part-time class schedule, my time is cut down to a sliver that is mostly distributed between sleeping and maintaining a social life. I don't want to turn into one of those boring guys who stopped having friends when he joined the workforce proper, and since a friend of mine died in a car accident a few months ago, I've been possessed with the desire to hang out with absolutely everybody lest somebody else shuffle off their mortal coil and leave me wishing I had spent time with them when I had the chance. And even when I actively set out with that goal I can't quite manage it.

In fact I dare say that desire has shaped the course of my life ever since.

I've also been somewhat focused of late on the life I had about two years ago, when I wrote quality shit nonstop and drank like a fish. Okay, not like a fish, I'm just so paranoid about becoming an alcoholic that I set that bar very low. I was drinking maybe a bottle of hooch a month at the peak of it. My point is, I wrote and I was good at it and I had dreams and lately I am not pursuing them in the least. I am also not involved in music lately which was an outright obsession of mine for years when I was a bit younger.

I could go back to focusing on those things and others but it would require the sacrifice of the time I spend with my friends, which I value greatly (both the time and the friends, I use the words "droog" and "tovarisch" not out of love for "A Clockwork Orange" but out of agreement with what I understand to be the typical Russian view of friendship).

So little time and so much to do. I don't know where my priorities should lie here.

I haven't written much lately. Bits and pieces here and there, as well as a couple movie ideas I'm working on with Elise (my ex). Serious literary projects? Nada. Music? Very little. Roleplaying games are growing less and less interesting to me. I still like playing, but I find it less and less engrossing to work on anything. I've always had a sort of creative urge in me and lately it's harder and harder to do anything that fulfills it.

I feel like I need something world-shaking to happen again, to wake up whatever fell asleep in me, that was so awake back then. I need some kind of spark to break up this haze of slowly-passing time as I wait for some interminable point in the future when my artistic faculties won't rebel against me, when every relationship won't crash and burn within a month, when I can look past the inevitability of death and give a shit anyway. I need inspiration.

I don't know what the point of all this was. Maybe I'm hoping somebody knows what the fuck I should do next. But I know that answer can only come from me.

Shantih shantih shantih

EDIT: Haha, how melodramatic! I think I should read less Eliot.