This Covid isolation has finally gotten me down. I’ve begun to wonder why I do anything. Why bother cooking when there’s no one to eat what I cook. No one to eat the bread I bake. And if it weren’t so frigid and icy outside, I’d drive and drop a fresh loaf by a friend’s house. I still take basic care of my plants, but I’ve lost motivation for things in general.
One thing I lost motivation for is writing. I published a Thanksgiving book in 2012, then a deeper fuller memoir in early March 2020. I didn’t know the world would shut down the week after it became available on Amazon. All my usual library activities where I might have talked it up disappeared with Covid restrictions. Zoom workshops just don’t work for casual promotional connections.
I went forward and built a website with a plan to post essays in its blog every two weeks. Even sent a monthly newsletter to thirty friends. Now it’s been a month since I posted. I haven’t even checked for comments because I’m discouraged by the same forty-plus Russian language spam in the comments.
How can I get back on track? Why should I? I need to go back to square one and remind myself what my reasons for writing are.
Why do I write? Is it the same reason as when I began?
How is it different these days? How can I deepen its purpose when motivation fails me?
What is defeating me?
- Nobody cares, why bother.
- It’s too late; I might be gone tomorrow.
- None of it is good enough, just not right.
- People will be critical, of course.
What is my purpose? I had a purpose before. I sat quiet, listened to my soul, then wrote this list:
- I write because I said I would – to my younger self. It’s one of those declarations young mothers and wives promise themselves to maintain a sense of future value. My journals from earlier years are scribbled in pencil on wide lined paper on top of a toilet seat late night. Details and emotions documented fresh.
- I write because I’m obsessed with books and nonfiction articles. Words and phrases that turn information into music.
- I write because, always, in my early years, school years, married and religious years, my words were virtually spit on, trampled on, cut off. I write now what she could not speak.
- Sticks and stones only break bones; but words destroy us (me). I write to reset truth – for the moment.
- I write to integrate remote teachers and mentors into my author “apprenticeship.” I consume the tomes of adept authors and write in parallel, in spirit, in brother-sisterhood.
- I write to solidify an idea. To explain connections between seemingly disparate concepts or events.
- With no particular expertise, no deep wisdom to impart, my hope is that we may discover something as I write about it for us. Let us assay an experience.
- I write because I see things. My mind pulls up video unplanned. Recall of prior events or encounters in vivid detail and emotion. (This is also why I don’t write.)
- I write to bear witness. I’ve experienced miracles and wonders, mystical encounters. I have to capture them so someone – some future generation – might read hope in these happenings. Hope of the beauty of God in reality.
- I write because words are especially beautiful when their semantic offerings tweak the tone of a phrase.
- I write to finally own an ethereal thing.
Yes. Now I remember!