just one.

I pass a pair of sunflowers each day on my walk home. The petals are still barely yellow, but the heavy heads hang low and sad. They've been planted on a bit of sloped yard, so they tower over me as I walk by. I look up into their faces and nod. They sway and droop a bit lower.

There's enough in the world to get you down, there's no doubt.

There are enough things to do that wading through and choosing sometimes seems an impossible task.

I get these bursts, wild wild bursts of excitement, moments of complete certainty that I am meant to be writing and I have so much to say that there isn't one moment to lose. The excitement holds me for a bit, then I get a little dizzy and overwhelmed, then I try to block it all out in my head and get things organized, and then I give up. Suddenly it's 10pm and I'm sitting on the couch and someone is asking me, Have you written anything? Most likely I am snarling back in self-defense and laziness.

It's some cousin of that despair I know well, the kind that looks all around at the world, sees so much suffering and need, and feels that nothing can be done about it all. The solution is always, must always be, to break it down into what I can manage. I have no choice. If I contemplate the great suffering of the world all at once, I'll never sleep at night.

It should apply also to writing. I need to remember to carve out the bit I can manage for now and let the rest be. I must remember that just because I'm not doing everything doesn't mean I'm doing nothing. It might be one word, one sentence, one person who connects and is motivated, inspired, renewed, understood, revealed, and so on. Just one is enough, isn't it? Just one.

I play the same trick with myself when I'm running. I say in my head, Just get to the next stop sign and you can quit. Arriving at the stop sign, I look out ahead and say, Well I can probably make it to the next stop sign. It's not much further. You understand. Over and over until I've run as far as I meant to. It's just easier to run block by block than mile by mile. And in the end, I've run just as far.

Enough of these metaphors and self-help drivel. There's nothing I can do about it. I so badly don't want to write but I so badly do want to write and I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to break the spell I just don't I just don't I just don't. I don't know how. The only thing I can grab a hold of is my intention to write some nonsense here so that I am writing something. Just something, just anything.

I am trying, again again again, trying to hold tight to the little spark and keep it fanned up and wild and bright instead of snarling and dark and resentful. The possibility of the world in all it's rawness and enormity can be paralyzing sometimes. The urge to create can be so fearsome. There's nothing else for it but to go on.