Lost
I’m not sure if I know how to do this anymore. My head hurts. I’m eating poorly, and sleeping worse. Some days when I write it feels as if I’m typing on butter. Other days my fingers detach themselves from my nervous system and later I can’t recognise what they’ve written on the screen as my own. I’m desperately lonely. I’ve lost the ability to convince myself I enjoy my own company. I’m worn down and worn out. My neck hurts with worry and my diaphragm is warped from anxiety. I don’t know if I want to write about Brussels and beer anymore. I don’t know if I want to write anymore. I don’t know if I can write anymore. I’m terrified of failure.
I’m tired, and I’m lost.
All of which has led me to ask myself: is there a future in this project? Maybe this is all just the dregs of a protracted creative hangover, the first autumnal rumblings of seasonal affective disorder turning my brain in on itself and the final snuffing out of the last embers of my most recent project. “A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects”, which ran for a year from July 2021, did exactly what I wanted it to. It gave me a goal, self-imposed deadlines, a sense of purpose and achievement. I could sit down every Saturday and Sunday morning to write, take some time off, and finish the edit Thursday night for publishing on a Friday. My brain craved structure, and it repaid me with a steady stream of words in more or less good order.
The “festival” I organised in July to mark the launch of what became a self-published book had a similar effect, though on my ego more so than any creative spark. The organising imperative, and the fear of failure and the embarrassment failure would trail in its wake, provided me with motivation. It got me out of the house, forced me to go and meet friends and contacts, to be sociable. It was exhausting, and it was uncomfortable, but it was, for a time, invigorating. It felt like I was trying on someone else’s clothes, someone with friends, someone who knew what he was doing, someone who had found something he might actually be good at.
Financially the festival was a failure, but I expected that. Professionally it was a middling achievement, but personally it did feel like a minor triumph. I promised myself some well-earned rest in August with a commitment to get back to writing for the blog after the rentrée in September. But it’s the first week of October and still, nothing. I have never experienced writing as something easy or ecstatic, but there’s been even more sturm und drang lately than there has been satisfaction.
Migraines, gastric spasms and threats of enemas have gotten in the way. The structure that I so cherished before the summer has dissolved; the weeks are busier, the days shorter, and the nights wasted in front of one screen or another. Food has become a rote exercise in staving off hunger and low blood sugar. My social life, small before the pandemic, has shrunk further still, and it's a creeping isolation that’s weighing on me. I do have ideas about where next to take Brussels Beer City - many - but I am, at the moment, a little lost.
Do I want to continue writing about Brussels and beer? Is it still interesting for me? More importantly, is it still interesting for you? If I stop what I’ve been doing these past five years,what comes after? Do I stop altogether? Or do I try something different? But if I try something different and I fail, and fail utterly, then what? What happens then? Would I want to continue to write?
These might seem like mundane questions, a fixation on something - a blog - that ultimately has little intrinsic value. But that would be to do down the time and the energy I’ve put into my writing in the last five years, and I’ve done myself down enough in the past. What this probably is, though, is too much onanism for a Friday afternoon blog post, and a part of me is sorry for inflicting this self-indulgent exercise on you.
But I just needed to explain, to myself as much as anyone else, why it’s been quiet here lately, and why it might be quiet for a little while longer.