From Here & Back Again
By Jim Coufal
(Cazenovia, NY – Sept. 2014) I haven’t written anything for the Courier in a while; truth be known, I haven’t written much of anything in a while. I’ve been suffering from what is usually referred to as “writer’s block.”
Oh.
I’ve had a piece accepted by my professional journal, but it was written before the blue funk hit me, and all I have been doing lately is making revisions in response to reviewer comments. I suspect such funks are common to us all in one regard or another…
That thing that you are usually so engrossed in, even kind of addicted to, suddenly loses its appeal. The golf match I almost drooled over in anticipation seems passé. The book and all books lose their interest. It’s been sew, sew, sew, and now I just don’t feel like sewing.
We become skilled at making rationalizations. I just washed, and I’ll get dirty if I go out and garden and have to wash again. While I once played in any weather, now it’s too wet or too cold.
Such rationalizations eliminate the need to admit I just don’t feel like doing it, whatever “it” is. Maybe something triggers these reactions; maybe there seems to be no reason, it just happens. We don’t know so much as we feel ‘I just can’t/don’t want to do it.’
How long these times will last is unknown. I fall back on old bit of philosophy I find true; this too shall pass. And it does. Another funk-buster is to make up your mind to do whatever it is that you feel the block is keeping you from doing. You don’t have to do it well (hence this piece), just do it.
The great Star Wars philosopher Yoda said (to paraphrase), there is no try, just do. And if at first you don’t succeed… You know the rest.
Earlier, I started a piece on who really needs to be on the gluten-free diet. I was overwhelmed by the amount of material on the subject and, feeling a bit overwhelmed, the funk won out.
Maybe I’ll go back to it; all I’ll say here is that it appears that many people are paying big money to utilize a diet that has little or no value to them. Maybe that’s not too different from many of the diets that constantly emerge promising slim bodies, healthy hearts, low cholesterol, a longer life, better sex and on ad infinitum.
And hallelujah, I saw my first Monarch butterfly of the season today, on my butterfly bush, next to milkweed plants.
Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.