Touching the Void

This is one of those days when I want to write something on the blog but nothing is taking shape in my mind. It is a very odd and hugely frustrating sensation to feel that you want to say or write something but you dont' know what. It seems like a contradiction in terms - if you have nothing to say, why have you an urge to say something?

I wonder if other people sometimes experience the same?

When it hits me I often open my blog and say, ok, I'm going to write something. I feel the need to get something out, to lift some kind of weight. And I open up, and go to new post: click. And there it is before me, the entry box lying open, a white, empty, void. And nothing comes. It's like lifting a full jug or water, placing over your glass, and then you pour and there's nothing. And you feel that the void on the page is telling you that your mind is also a void.

For an instant you try to find the issue that's making you want to write. What is it? You pause and think, and let your thoughts run, but they race, and skip. Is it personal? Or is it one of my pet topics? Is it something new or something in the news today, some hook in the subconscience from today's paper or yesterday's news? You feel your mind panicking. Trying to search for something deeply important to it, and beginning to realise it's not there. Where is it? I feel the niggle?

Then it kind of finds something, snippets, and semi-thoughts buzz past in a frenzy, too quick to snatch from of the neurons: cowen-lawn-burma-bank-mother-baby-bill-holidaybooking- bookreview-hillarobama-ofaolain-brown-cycloneburma-
homewifebaby-past-childhood-learn-cabinet-work
-lisbon-politics-radiogreens. STOP.

And you have a long series of those little shocks you get when you think you've lost your keys, thousands of those instances, maybe millions all racing and packed into a single second of life. For a moment it feels like a short circuit? Can brains reset? And when they reboot is everything still there?

But all this happens so fast. And then there's a calm. Wait a minute! I don't have to write a blog. It doesn't matter. Even if I wrote something brilliant or devastating or beautiful, it wouldn't matter. Because it's only my blog. It's irrelavent to my life. This is the mobile phone syndrome where people feel they have to answer it, or feel empty and lost if they leave the house without it. Is it a technology thing?

But you calm down. Stand back. It's only the blog! And this is a beautful summers day: lawnhomewifebaby.