The Etch-A-Sketch
Oct. 19th, 2009 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatRemember those etch-a-sketch toys? They made a come-back a few years ago, where you have a plastic red box, a blank screen, and two little red knobs in which to draw objects? You fiddle with them until you make something funky, then with a quick swipe, it is blank again? The new variety had a red static pencil. You'd draw a picture then it would fade and become blank again.
Feeling a lot like that etch-a-sketch screen lately. Or rather, as if my life, not me necessarily, but my "personal" life is now this blank slate. And I'm staring at it, trying to figure out what to put on it. Ideas pop up, I attempt to etch them onto the page, but they fade before I get very far. I become bored or disillusioned and they disperse like ill-formed fragments. Nothing is sticking. I'm walking through a thick haze, unable to focus, or care too much about anything for very long. As if I'm moving step by ardorous step up a mountain made of mud. Knee deep. Each step an effort. And I look up at the mountain and see well an etch-a-sketch screen.
If that makes sense?
Today, I tried to jot down some ideas for a story in a little notebook I'd bought. Made it through the listing of three characters names and their alter-egos, before I grew tired of the idea and decided it was stupid and unworkable. Why bother. Came home and tried to knit, until I ran out of yarn and looked at the mess of stitches thinking...why continue. Then shifted to my sketching pad, and attempted to draw something besides eyes or faceless figures with funky outfits. Half-way through, I found myself edgy and restless. I go to the meetup groups and can't quite commit to any of the social networking functions. Feel the same way about books too...I've started five to six novels this summer, and haven't finished any of them. I am determined to finish Dracula - even if it takes me two months to do it. Half-way through, so there is a chance. And the whole condo/co-op search has more or less fallen by the way-side, ie. I've given up. I can't afford the place of my dreams in the location of my dreams, so why bother? I'm better off where I am. And my book, my finished novel...I find it difficult to do anything with. It sits neglected on my harddrive, aching for a reader other than the scant few who have read it and enjoyed it.
It's as if I'm staring at a blank slate or page or whatever. That blank screen that each writer looks at forever and a day or so it seems. Writer's block? More like life block, if there is such a thing. I feel frozen. Stuck. Unable to move. Yet I am moving. Each day.
Each day I put something or try to etch something on that page and much like the etch-a-sketch, I find myself erasing it within moments.
What I had has fallen away...like scales or skin, shedded, or the etch-a-sketch so carefully drawn but no longer remembered. And here I am, sitting here, looking at the blank screen trying desperately to remember what was there, then unable to, or rather unable to recreate it, trying to sketch something new instead. But the knobs won't turn or they won't turn the way I want them to on the etch-a-sketch device...and all I seem to get is gibberish.
I've been told it gets better. That step by step, stone by stone, bird by bird, word by word..scratch by scratch the page begins to slowly fill and a picture forms. A path is viewable. And I will no longer feel like the blank screen on a etch-a-sketch where nothing is written...frozen and white.
Oh well, at least I'm taking care of my body - doing the whole PT thing, building muscel strength and flexibility...so soon, I might be able to run and do yoga without serious injury. And work for what it is worth seems to be okay, slow at the moment, but okay. The rest...will, or so I tell myself, come with time and patience.
Feeling a lot like that etch-a-sketch screen lately. Or rather, as if my life, not me necessarily, but my "personal" life is now this blank slate. And I'm staring at it, trying to figure out what to put on it. Ideas pop up, I attempt to etch them onto the page, but they fade before I get very far. I become bored or disillusioned and they disperse like ill-formed fragments. Nothing is sticking. I'm walking through a thick haze, unable to focus, or care too much about anything for very long. As if I'm moving step by ardorous step up a mountain made of mud. Knee deep. Each step an effort. And I look up at the mountain and see well an etch-a-sketch screen.
If that makes sense?
Today, I tried to jot down some ideas for a story in a little notebook I'd bought. Made it through the listing of three characters names and their alter-egos, before I grew tired of the idea and decided it was stupid and unworkable. Why bother. Came home and tried to knit, until I ran out of yarn and looked at the mess of stitches thinking...why continue. Then shifted to my sketching pad, and attempted to draw something besides eyes or faceless figures with funky outfits. Half-way through, I found myself edgy and restless. I go to the meetup groups and can't quite commit to any of the social networking functions. Feel the same way about books too...I've started five to six novels this summer, and haven't finished any of them. I am determined to finish Dracula - even if it takes me two months to do it. Half-way through, so there is a chance. And the whole condo/co-op search has more or less fallen by the way-side, ie. I've given up. I can't afford the place of my dreams in the location of my dreams, so why bother? I'm better off where I am. And my book, my finished novel...I find it difficult to do anything with. It sits neglected on my harddrive, aching for a reader other than the scant few who have read it and enjoyed it.
It's as if I'm staring at a blank slate or page or whatever. That blank screen that each writer looks at forever and a day or so it seems. Writer's block? More like life block, if there is such a thing. I feel frozen. Stuck. Unable to move. Yet I am moving. Each day.
Each day I put something or try to etch something on that page and much like the etch-a-sketch, I find myself erasing it within moments.
What I had has fallen away...like scales or skin, shedded, or the etch-a-sketch so carefully drawn but no longer remembered. And here I am, sitting here, looking at the blank screen trying desperately to remember what was there, then unable to, or rather unable to recreate it, trying to sketch something new instead. But the knobs won't turn or they won't turn the way I want them to on the etch-a-sketch device...and all I seem to get is gibberish.
I've been told it gets better. That step by step, stone by stone, bird by bird, word by word..scratch by scratch the page begins to slowly fill and a picture forms. A path is viewable. And I will no longer feel like the blank screen on a etch-a-sketch where nothing is written...frozen and white.
Oh well, at least I'm taking care of my body - doing the whole PT thing, building muscel strength and flexibility...so soon, I might be able to run and do yoga without serious injury. And work for what it is worth seems to be okay, slow at the moment, but okay. The rest...will, or so I tell myself, come with time and patience.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 10:42 am (UTC)I remember that blank feeling so well. You describe it perfectly.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 02:53 pm (UTC)