Finding Light In The Blackout

My creative output for the past several months has been pretty much nonexistent. Even as I type this, I worry that I won’t be able to convey exactly just how fucking difficult it’s been – and still is – because my brain is all fog and no substance.

But I’m better than I was a couple of weeks back. I know this for sure because today my sister was explaining to me how terrifying I was back then. How not there I was, and how I seem a little like my old self again now. I say a little because it really is a little. There’s still so much of me missing…and I don’t know if I’ll ever see those parts of myself again, which scares the shit out of me.

While my depression is slowly, slowly lifting, I’m still not, you know, feeling. I’m not tuned into the world like I was before, when the smallest thing could ignite my imagination and see me happily thrashing out thousands of words in a few hours.

This loss of imagination – and a friend bringing up the topic of mental block – has lead me to thinking if it’s more than just my depression that’s hindering my creativity. That I might have actually inadvertently put a block on myself.

So I’ve been reading into mental block and creative block and writer’s block and I encountered Austin Kleon, the author of Newspaper Blackout, a book of poetry made by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker. And I thought to myself ‘THAT’S WHAT I NEED TO DO.’

So today I excitedly bought a copy of the Guardian and a black permanent marker and, with a quiet house all to myself, I set to it.

And I found nothing.

And nothing.

And nothing.

Then finally, after about three hours, I scrambled this together…

Now, I know it’s not much, but it’s a start and I’m stoked. I know this poem has so much more that it needs to say. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find the rest of its voice.