Artist Fever

HELLO OLD FRIENDS!

It has been a hot minute since I blogged, y'all.

The creative juices were utterly DRY for a while. The depths of a dry, lackluster winter sucked the life out of me, and I spent a solid eight weeks going from school to work to miserable social events to bed and REPEAT. Sounds like a solidly healthy way of life, and yes - compared to the torrent of emotion that swept me through last semester, this season hasn't been THAT bad. My grades are impeccable, I have overcome my workplace challenges with grace and dignity (kind of LOLZ don't date people you work with) and my personal sanity has been at an all time high!

But... I've been so BORED. Not in a healthy way. Not in an "I'm being productive and pushing through the grind in order to make my life better" kind of way.

NOPE, I've been bored in a "what's the point of getting up every day, the world sucks, I suck, all y'all suck" kind of way. And then, one day, while perusing the shelves of a used bookstore with a darling pal home on spring break (and one of the few friends I can say I have anymore), I found a dusty copy of a book called Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft.

I used to write, and I mean WRITE. Not just blog a few times a month in this journal-style manner, I used to POUR into pages my ideas and stories and poems and streams of words that came to me from on high. I couldn't help it! I filled notebooks on notebooks in middle and high school. It was an irresistible call. Not because it helped me in any way, in fact... sometimes it seemed to only highlight the confusing, chaotic aspects of life. Art for me has not always been a source of relief, and lately, I've given up on it altogether.

Anyway, back to the bookstore scene. I flipped through the pages, glancing for the typical criteria I use to evaluate prospective purchases. Chapter structure is good, the font isn't hideous, lots of italics (important!) and bits and pieces of poetry (yes!) scattered throughout. Another plus!

This book captured me with the opening line: "I have not seen writing lead to happiness in my friends' lives."

BAM. Thank you, Natalie Goldberg. Thank you.

Something about the way she bluntly phrased realities about writing hooked me.

I bought the book, and I began to read, and then about thirty pages in I felt that old familiar call...

I MUST WRITE!

And I began a new notebook and I didn't look back. I wrote a hundred pages in three days. I rushed back to the bookstore to buy whatever other books this author had. With her as my guide, I have plunged back into this chaotic artist's world, and it IS beautiful here.

Fittingly, spring has started to peek around the corner at us here in Asheville, and it is a delight to be able to drive up to a pretty spot on the parkway with pillows, blankets, water bottles, and my sheath of paper. A few weeks ago, I complained of the ever-heated baby fever that has plagued me for years. But I can safely say that fire has dimmed, and I now have something else - book fever? Creation fever? Word fever?

Whatever it is, it compels me, and I'm happy to say I have found a cure for the boredom that has taunted me for weeks. I may not blog on here as often as I did last year (when it was my one and only New Year's Resolution) but rest assured - somewhere, somehow, I am writing.