It’s amazing what a little writing and sleep can do.

Pouring out all the toxins in my mind, all the build-up of the day, the days, the weeks… writers block is an awful thing for the mind and heart. And it creeps, it slithers in like this black film, covering every outlet you thought you had. Every portal of creation clogged with this blackness.

And all it is, really, is your lack of attention. A lack of grounding. Getting lost and caught up in stress, in life, in the day. Not making time to for ritual, for clearing. It really is therapy, and when you don’t make time for therapy, then everything just crumbles around you. Everything becomes distorted, mean, ugly… the world turns on you.

You turn on you.

“And I ain’t been sleepin.’ And I’m tired as hell. And I stare at the ceilin’ and talk to myself.”

~ Trampled by Turtles

The words stop flowing. The sleep stops coming. The roller coaster ride begins—pumping caffeine in the morning and washing it down with whiskey and wine in the evening.

Lost in your own mucked up reality, you seek refuge in everything that won’t bring you refuge. Solace is sought at the bottom of a bottle when it’s so easily got at the end of your fingertips.

Sometimes, the dry spells last days, weeks, even months. However long, it always feels like an eternity. It always feels like a loss of self, a loss of sanity, a loss of stability. You lose your grounding because you’re inextricably tied to this outflow, this outpouring of simultaneous release and creation.

But sometimes it’s necessary, just like sometimes it’s necessary to break down to rebuild. Sometimes you have to step away, let things float and settle, let things go. And when you feel you’re losing your way, losing your ground, losing yourself… then it’s time to come back to the page.

Lots of people would say that you should never leave the page. I’m a firm believer in that also. But I’m also a firm believer in emotions, the psyche and how these play into the ups and downs we all experience. Even the best writers and artists lose their way; it’s what a non-artistic friend of mine called the “comedy and tragedy” of being creative.

We’re sensitive, we’re in tune, we’re emotional… all these things leave us open to experiencing and falling prey to so many of life’s joys and despairs, but on such different, denser levels.

We feel, therefore we create, therefore we are. We are nothing without the release and creation. Because we’ve all got stories and pictures and sculptures and offerings building, building, building inside of us, and unless we release these cosmic creations we are so insanely lucky to be gifted with, we collapse on ourselves.

Or explode. Inside and outside, a total annihilation takes place.

Coming back to this routine, this ritual, is the most sacred act of love we can show ourselves. If we don’t take care of this first, most basic, primal need, what good are we? What good are we to those we love, to the world, and most importantly, to ourselves?

It’s the cycle. Everything is cyclical, and we end up back in the grey area. But that’s such an intensely important place to be, because it allows us to break through the black and white extremes and to learn how to navigate through the paths that aren’t so clearly defined. These passages make us lose ourselves and find our way back, but in a completely different way. And it may not even be that much different than the last time, but there’s always some shred of a new approach that makes its way in and puts a different spin on things.

And that one sliver of variation may be all it takes to make this pass through the grey area the game changer that it was meant to be.

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Ed: Sara Crolick

{photo: via pixoto}