No words

I wrote a grand total of three posts on this blog last year. And they were all sad.

That was because 2010 was kind of a sad year...which is why I didn't post much. A lot of what happened last year, I just didn't feel like talking about and rehashing. Or I couldn't talk about in such a public forum. Or I didn't have the right words to really talk about how I was feeling.

It is a weird thing to be a writer and not have words. I don't mean a temporary case of writer's block, or just struggling to find the perfect word or phrase to suit a particular moment or mood. I mean when you just can find the words at all--when you don't even know where to start.

Words help me frame my world. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going 90 mph, turning over too many ideas and emotions at once--trying to understand where I am in life, my aspirations, what's wrong with the world, how to solve a problem at work. Big, "in the grand scheme of things" ideas and little, "what's for dinner" thoughts that come and go.

When it all gets to0 much and something has to give, it generally escapes in the form of writing. Putting pen to paper, so to speak, helps me formalize my thoughts. It is purposeful and structured (at least compared to the 90 mph spinning of my brain), and it helps me sort things out in a different way.

Last year was different. The things I dealt with were so deeply personal that I didn't feel comfortable writing about them here, and even if I had, I just didn't know where to start.

So I just didn't write. And all the words I couldn't figure out how to put on paper flew around inside my head, bumping into each other and making things all together too crowded, and nothing got any clearer. There are still a lot of them flying around up there, bumping around and clouding things up, but the forecast seems to be improving lately.

I'll admit, there is still one big issue from last year that is hanging around, undealt with. The elephant in the room--or in this case, the elephant in my brain. It's an issue where I'm powerless and that is a hard thing to accept. I've talked at length to good friends about it, yet I haven't really talked about it to the one person I should be addressing. I can't find the words.

As I said earlier...it's a weird thing to be a writer and not have words.