Tonto Strikes Again

So I haven't written in a very long time, anything worthwhile anyway, and it's strange to pick up again.  The keyboard feels like an entirely foreign machine beneath my fingertips, and the art of crafting thoughts daunts me because I feel I have nothing to say.  I never thought it would come to this:  me desperately clutching a pad of paper (metaphorically, of course) and running after a truckload of verbiage anxious to rummage through its assortment because I feel I haven't any of my own, but it has.

When I scroll down the Facebook feed (guilty as charged), read people's posts and find someone that composes good sentences, I always start a little.  This tiny jarring of emotion, the one that used to delight me "Hark, another writer!", now pricks at my soul.  I admit, I've become a tad bit jealous.  Frankly, I don't know if I can write anymore, crafting my world with the same depth and passion that I used to...

Day after day the pen sits on my desk and the computer lies untouched.  I usually forget about them even existing, caught up with life as I am, but sometimes my eyes travel to those lonely, dusty objects and I pine for what used to be.  I remember lazy afternoons spent with my journal in cozy cafe's writing about everything and nothing.  Paper, pen and the computer were familiar friends that I relied heavily on everyday to air out my universe and bring me pleasure.  Seems I was always spritzing up my sentences with new vocabulary and pathways of thought.  Moving my hand across the page was akin to eating chocolate those days; stimulating, orgasmic and very, very rewarding.

Nowadays it's different.  I feel dismembered from the very tools that used to feel like extensions of my soul.  Whereas before my writing took precedence over everything in my life, now everything in my life seems to take precedence over it.  To be fair, I have a boyfriend now, my father passed away and a plethora of other happenings have filled my plate and my emotions, but rather than taking pen to paper and airing them out, I have chosen a silent path and slowly but surely the distance has grown between us...

So where am I today?  Well, seeing as how I still can still piece sentences together (whew!) I'm not as far away as I believed from the shores of self-expression, but the joy and anticipation of crafting material still eludes me.  I once read that writing changes as one evolves and it makes sense.  Maybe that's what happened to me.  For a good while, I was smitten by the entire creative process that allowed me to make my inside world a reality.

Now, I view writing as a more mechanical act, perfunctory in nature and practical in essence.  I'm not as infatuated by the craft, though I have enormous respect for it (hey, it's hard to write well) and the urgency to self-express is not as all-consuming as it once was.  But to be honest, I can still hear writings' siren call.  It beckons and teases my soul more often than I'd like, promising riches if I will only come and I can't escape it, try as I might.  I find myself filling journals, scribbling in notebooks, writing on my hand...on everything I can!  It's like Jesus; it never leaves me, though I leave it.

I can't shake it off, writing is a part of me and I guess even though I've changed, I've stayed the same.  I am and always will be, a writer.