I'd fended off a cold for most of January. The catering job required a lot of loading and unloading from my vehicle to the venue and back again in near zero temperatures, and the morning after, I awoke with a minor ear infection, which blossomed into a severe sinus infection and both ears infected. A wracking cough developed, and it felt as though my head were being held underwater.
I missed a couple days of work, too sick and too miserable to do much more than wish I were better.
And that is what this post is all about.
Rita Mae Brown once advised writers to live healthy, that it required stamina and physical well-being to sit at the keyboard or confront the blank sheet of paper. She said a writer should never write when drunk or under the influence of any drug; it might seem to lead to creative thought, but your thoughts are not clear.
I can say the same for illness. Despite the down time spent lying on the sofa or in bed, time I might have otherwise used to write, or even read, I felt so miserable that all creative thought was banished, replaced by an endless prayer for relief.
Even with prescribed antibiotics and the slow return to normal, my creative mind is sluggish, clogged with the virus.
Here I am though, writing away the cobwebs, the sludge of a cold and feeling better each day. There are notes for a poem, more ideas for future blog posts and the other night, I was able to sit down and do some editing on the poems written in November.
I might have experienced some guilt for missing a couple weeks of writing, but I have let that go with the realization that when you are ill, or dealing with a new stress (like waking up at 3am every day), it's okay to put your creativity aside. If you see poetry everywhere around you, if you imagine whole stories in the atomic split of a second, if you find wonder in words, you will return to your creative self when you're ready.
No comments:
Post a Comment