On June 26th I went on a 10 day road trip around Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia.
It was a holiday to visit two of my best friends from Greece. In between it was leaving the windows down with my hair up, feeling the air on my face as tunes shuffled.
That was the plan.
On this same trip, unbeknownst to me, the Universe decided it was also time for me to unlock the shackles I had been carrying on my back for the better part of a half a decade.
I couldn’t believe it. I thought that weight was a lifetime sentence. I didn’t question why. Off they flew. And with each passing white line on the highway, I was one step lighter.
I didn’t look back.
By journey’s end, I was on the side of happiness. This has led me to a place of calm, which has me once again walking around this Earth as a member of a society, not just as some toad in a sad burlap bag.
It has been, in a word, lovely.
Unfortunately, I have lost the ability to put words to paper (so to speak). Where I used to write once or twice a day for hours, since my return I’ve only posted maybe five blogs since July.
I can’t help it. My brain is in full sponge absorbing mode. In no way am I complaining. Are you kidding me? This is a nice non-problem to have. But I do wonder.
What if I’m one of those of people who can only produce art when I’m down and out? That would be something. I finally find a creative outlet but it only shows up in dive bars.
Me and Bukowski?
What a cliché.
Even though I miss it, I’m not going to ‘fix the glitch’ just to write again.
The process and discipline of putting words together is so powerful. With every new blog entry I felt like a superhero, cape and all. If there was nothing else to accomplish for the rest of the day, at least I created something that had not existed the day before. And I always learned.
What I do not miss is the reason why I began this blog: To explore the brighter side of my brain as I floated in amongst poor choices and past regrets.
Whoosh, now that’s a telling statement. Remember that sad sack I mentioned earlier? Yeah, take that image and submerge it in an overflowing wooden water barrel in some dusty old Western saloon town. That was me. Stuck in a vat. Yuck. Writing helped.
Well, this past Summer the Universe helped me knock over that barrel …
What I need to do with this forum is rebrand this blog, make it not an exercise to distract me from me but rather more of a blank canvas and blinking cursor waiting for me to op/ed about that which I have absorbed. And if I’m not able to get anything down, it means I’m not engaging the right spaces.
In full disclose of this lazy Sunday, I’m not sure how to weave interest in a day spent humming on a front porch, watching sport and binge listening to a podcast with the ever charming Rory Scovel and Dan Van Kirk. I can certainly try.
And if being in this place means Finnegan Begin Again every so often becomes a collection of Instagram kitten pics?
So be it.
Go Finnegan. Go.