I’ve been dodging writing of late, and doing far too good a job at it. Irksomely it means I’ve been dodging readings as well, as that if I’m not reading it makes it much easier to dodge writing. Watching the news, scrolling endlessly through memes and nonsense on various distraction engines, it’s slowly dawning on me that these things steal my words. They drain the urge to articulate, replacing that urge to write with a stimulus response that tends towards a shout of “what the fuck” rather than anything meaningful or useful to say. Though, to be honest, “what the fuck” seems as good a response as any these days.

Podcasts, too, seem to drain the desire to put fingers to keys or pen to paper. Good for doing the washing up, or setting the table, or when it’s standing room only on the tube. But it’s just media washing over me. There’s little engagement. I thought about doing it myself for a brief time. I even bought a podcast mic. I still have it. It has never recorded a word. I’m not even comfortable sending voice notes. And writing about podcasts seems to be a total and utter waste of words, time and effort.

Apropos of nothing at all, my relationship with the Oxford comma remains complicated.

In order to loosen the words stuck in my head I’ve started reading again. Books made of paper. Not on a screen or read out loud. I found my copy of The Chanceyville Incident by David Bradley, which I thought I’d lost. It was behind a cupboard. I was two-thirds of the way through when I lost it. Few things frustrate me more than losing a book mid-read or later. Finding it seemed like a sign. Of course I’d found it after I’d bought another copy, but I’m convinced that if I hadn’t bought the other copy I would never have found the other. That’s the way my brain works. Or doesn’t work. One or the other.

It’s a superb novel. I picked up where I left off with a bit of back-skimming to regain my bearings but have ploughed through the dense prose and find myself slowing down as get towards the end, not wanting it to finish and terrified for the characters. As a book about history, it is in very rare air, and I’ve been thinking a great deal about Robert Penn Warren’s immortal classic, All the King’s Men as the story draws to a close. One chapter on a recent flight to Seville stole my breath and made me want to write again, with urgency. Lots of things make me want to write again. Few make me want to with urgency.

It’s not the only thing pushing me to write again. Life is generally different now. In the past, writing helped me cope with and understand all the crazy fucking changes going on. Not writing has left me confused and bewildered. Whether I can write my way out of confusion and bewilderment remains to be seen. Whether I can still write in a compelling enough manner for folks to want to read it also remains to be seen. But so much has changed, and so little of it has been chronicled, so I’m going to give it a shot. Like a lazy phoenix, my writing emerges from the ashes. I’ll overwrite for a time before I get settled in. Using too many adverbs and adjectives. Succumbing to some cheeky alliteration will take place. As I get used to using words again, I reckon it’ll all sort itself out.

One thing that will change, as I stretch out and shake the rust and dust off, is how I do this. This website will stay here, sort of, but I’ve never really jived with this particular blogging engine the way I did with the Blogspot and Wordpresses of old. My attempts to put all my writing under one roof resulted in me doing much less writing. So I’m going to try something else. I’m not sure how it’s all going to look or work out, but it’s going to be different and regular and sometimes it will be a journal and sometimes it will be about wine and sometimes it will be about the dog and sometimes it might be about nothing at all. Quite a lot of the time, I reckon.