Conquering Writers Block: Another GenXer Hits Youtube and TikTok

Why haven't I been writing my blog for a while? Because I've had the worst writers block. Honestly, I've never even had writers' block before. It's a horrible, dried up, feeling, a feeling of being useless and unproductive, no matter what else I've been doing that might actually be of value.

Beau keeps reminding me that I don't need to produce anything. I can just enjoy living. But I can't shake the feeling that, since I survived to 54 against so many odds, I have to do something with that survival, and that something is writing.

I've felt stuck.

Why haven't I been writing my blog for a while? Because I've had the worst writers block. Honestly, I've never even had writers' block before. It's a horrible, dried up, feeling, a feeling of being useless and unproductive, no matter what else I've been doing that might actually be of value. 

Beau keeps reminding me that I don't need to produce anything. I can just enjoy living. But I can't shake the feeling that, since I survived to 54 against so many odds, I have to do something with that survival, and that something is writing. 

I've felt stuck.

I know exactly why this is happening.

Covid. Or, more specifically, Covid denial. We're still in a global pandemic, folks, and it hurts like hell that most of you don't believe it, or, worse, don't care because "only the vulnerable" are still affected. It's not true that we're the only ones affected. The more times you get Covid, the higher the risk that you too will become seriously, permanently ill or disabled.

Or dead.

But even if it were just the vulnerable still affected by Covid, our lives actually do matter. That's me, folks, disabled and weak. That's my husband, finally diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and taking immunosuppressants as the only possible treatment. That's your grandmother. That's the little kid in the stroller beside you at the grocery store. That's disproportionately Black Americans and Indigenous people in North America.

That's people whose lives matter. Or they should matter - to you. But they don't. Not if you're not doing anything to protect us.

The vulnerable, whose lives actually do matter, are everywhere and the only way for you to protect them is to vaccinate and mask.

It's also the only way to protect yourself from becoming one of them. One of us. One of me.

But you don't. You don't mask. You don't vaccinate. Most of you don't.

 

And that reality is so utterly, abjectly alienating and demoralizing that I've been so deeply depressed, I've been unable to write.

All my life, I've needed a creative outlet. It's been as necessary as breathing. Life without it is like life without sunshine. And my depression has taken that away from me.

So now I'm trying videos, short and long. People are watching them and that's encouraging. I'm getting ideas for more videos and I'm feeling a bit more alive.

So far, my videos have been varied, like my blog, and include outfit videos...

... rant videos...

... advice videos...

... for those with lives like my own...

... crow videos, of course...

... funny videos, like this one of two GenXers with postgraduate degrees (me and Beau) trying to figure out how to take a photo...

... and victory videos.

(Yes, I'm using a wheelchair now, something I would have written about if I hadn't had writers block.)

Basically, like my blog, my videos are about whatever strikes my fancy - and might strike yours.

Let me know what you think. Let me know if you have ideas for more videos.

Let's just see where this goes.