I have been avoiding making anything serious for a while now. Hiding from the need to be creative because… why? I have been asking myself this question for months, years, and still have no real or even half way decent answer.

I have been hiding in media consumption. Books, games, audiobooks, news articles, social media, television, and music. Anything so I don’t end up accidentally confronting anything real. Absolutely nothing serious. Now it’s the holiday season and I get to blame that for a complete lack of enthusiasm for anything. I do the same thing every year, pretty much.

There is absolutely no explanation I can invent or otherwise generate for said lack. It really just is. From the looks of things I can’t do anything about it from here. The solution is probably very simple, just do the thing I need to do. “Nike style” (as we said at CCP). Just grit my teeth and get something started and finished. Strop being a baby about it, whatever it might be. I know it sounds painfully obvious, but that’s the problem. I’m avoiding something that could cause me some amount of pain.

Other than that as a solution I have absolutely nothing. Just a damn big void of time in my work. So I have been able to down a handful of books and articles about how the whole world is going to pieces. Also I have been listening to some great music, new and old. And, I have been rotting my brain and soul in front of the worst junk tv shows out there. I find myself spinning the same old songs and records as well as my mental wheels all at the same time. Doing nowhere fast. I can smell the rubber burning. Maybe you can too. 

In part, the answer I keep going to is caffeine. I’ll drink a bunch of coffee, tea, and energy drinks to try to amp myself up to do something. Anything. However, in the end I only succeed in making myself a ball of anxious energy. Even when it comes to the usual day-to-day chores around the house feel monumental when I’m all fired up on caffeine and nicotine. Nothing I say to myself seems to make the slightest dent in the inertia I’ll sit and stare at screens. Maybe tapping away at a game, or shopping, or just staring vacantly wondering what I meant to do when I picked the phone up.

I feel I’m slipping, generally losing it. Momentum or whatever I’ve already lost and entirely forgotten about. The remnant of it is a feeling of guilt. And that’s the worst part.