After a long period where I found it impossible to write, I am back to getting words down. It’s been a highly stressful year. One year ago I brought my husband home from a hospital stay following his massive heart attack. I knew that I might not have him for much longer, and indeed, his health was not good for eleven months, slipping ever more into pain and long gray days. Now, following two major procedures on heart and legs to restore circulation, he’s once more reading what I write. It’s a blessing and a wonder.
As he began to recover a few weeks ago, I decided that I must begin to write again. In order to do that, the first thing I had to do was to find time to do nothing. I had to shut off my mind for a little while, so I could think again. I’d been occupying my head with reading, podcasts, substacks, and just daily life concerns. There was no space in there for story. I can write in stolen fifteen-minute intervals if I must, but I can’t do that if there is no story to push out onto paper when I have the chance to seize a pen or keyboard and take action.
I looked at my cluttered calendar, identified a day where I could clear the decks for a few hours, and did so. I then planned to spend some time in the garden digging and moving mulch about. This is a good task for me that keeps the hands busy while allowing my imagination room to roam. For a couple of days leading up to that day, when I did my daily reading time (bedtime reading is part of my routine now, as I had stopped reading, and that’s never a good sign for my health), I focused on books that fed into a project I’m planning for the latter half of this year.
Now, none of this may work for you, should you find yourself blocked by stress, health, life’s toils, or whatever ails you. However, planning out time to think – really think, not just have a period of time where you do nothing – will always help. Find time to sit with your thoughts, if physical activity doesn’t work for you. No television, no scrolling, possibly not even music. Just… you and that big brain inside your skull.
This also doesn’t work well, I’ve learned, if you have the inner pressure of pain, or the external of fear for a loved one. I’ve written, in the last year. It was intermittent and a struggle every time. I don’t even know if this will last. I’m going to keep working at it, though. I need to be able to write. I also have learned to give myself grace and not guilt when I cannot hold a story in my head. There are times in our lives when everything focuses down to a singular – or perhaps plural – point of intensity. Fighting for a loved one’s health. Making sure bills are paid and food is on the table. These seasons pass in time. When they do, that’s when you carve out the time to get away from all the ways you kept yourself distracted, and sit and think.
And now, I’m going to go work in my garden for a while.
Mad Genius Club 
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