Work in Progress #12: The Empty Cup

Okay, so…

The last time we really talked was in the summer.  I had written a bit about being burnt out, and how I had turned the corner and was ready to write again.  I had some short stories planned out.  And I was going to spend the summer writing to finish the year strong.

And you may or may not have noticed, the exact opposite happened.  Instead of putting my nose to the grindstone and getting my butt in the chair, I found myself dealing with the very real question of whether writing and publishing was still worth the effort. They say that if someone is the same person at 40 as they were at 20, that person probably wasted 20 years.  If I’ve been chasing this dream for the last 20 years and I’m still in the same place I was when I started, has this been a waste of time?

When I got laid off last April, I tried to make the best of if by carving out significant butt-in-chair time.  I’m lucky because my primary career is an in-demand field, and I knew I wouldn’t be out of work long (I was working again in less than a month).  A solid severance kept bills paid for a couple of months, so there were means and opportunities to go along with motivation, and I thought I’d be able to bang out work.  I had the best chance I could have asked for to transition into full-time writing.

And all I wanted to do was sleep.

Turns out, having a few life upheavals in a row makes it difficult to maintain creative energy.  You can’t pour from an empty cup, they say.  Well, my cup was not only empty, but it was also left in the hot sun and became so brittle that I was left with only an existential question about writing: Do I still want to try?

The last few months of 2023 were great for refilling the cup.  My wife and I finally went on our long-delayed honeymoon.  We spent the holidays with family.  We have both settled in at our respective new jobs, and as life started to get stable again, the cup slowly filled, and the writing itch came back.

Is the cup full?  Hell, no.  There’s way too much going on around me for that.  Will the cup empty again?  I hope not, but look at the world we live in.  We live in anxious times, and sometimes what’s in the cup will be needed to keep ourselves and the people closest to us sane.  But right now, I do have some juice in me, and that’s got to count for something.