The Bigness of It All
For those who pay any iota of attention (and I’m not entirely sure why you do), you may have noticed a distinct absence of my words lately. I haven’t posted Jack Diddly on here since February (except for this one back in May). That was roughly 5 months ago for those without calendars.
Yes, I still have a computer. Yes, I still have lots of pens and notebooks. Yes, I still know how to write (as much as I ever did I suppose).
But since February no words have come through my computer or pens or notebooks.
I’ve been paralyzed.
Okay, to be completely honest, I haven’t done zero writing. I did write that book a few months back. I recently pooped out an essay that I’m shopping around.* I wrote some scenes for a writing competition. And I’m in the early stages of drafting and writing a web series. It’s still in its infancy, that precarious stage where I don’t want to talk too much about it lest I tempt it to fly away to another, more capable writer.
Nevertheless, words haven’t come easy for here, this little space of the internet, this Pat Does Words playground of mine. These words have been incredibly hard to come by. Sitting down to write these words is the equivalent of committing to staring in the mirror for a few hours while I pull my own teeth.
I’ve avoided saying ‘writers block’ because that implies the well is dry. It suggests that the bucket has been dropped and brings up nothing. I’ve dropped the bucket and I get words, they’re just not the words I thought I would get. They’re what I would call non-essential words – scenes and silly e-books. They are not the essential heart words of PDW.
Rather than fight it I decided to get curious about it. After a little investigation, I discovered, in a completely unsurprising and yawn-worth plot twist, it’s fear. That reptilian brain emotion designed to keep us alive on the Sahara a few millennia ago is currently cockblocking me in the year 2020.
Per the directions of Brené Brown (and all of Oprah’s gurus really), whenever fear arises, I try to sit with it and wrap a warm blanket of language around it. I’ve found that a language blanket is the best way to calm fear’s incessant noisemaking. Fighting fear or ignoring it are two ways to ensure it’ll get louder and wreak havoc on your weekend.
With this particular case of the scaries, I’ve found that I’m afraid of the bigness of everything going on. There’s a global pandemic that is making millions of people sick and has killed hundreds of thousands. There’s a widescale (White) awakening to the anti-Black racism woven into every fiber of every system in every corner of this nation (Black folks have never not known that). There’s an administration that is inciting very real hate and has taken a machete to our democracy for the last three and a half years.
And then there’s me.
Writing words.
Alone.
In my room.
Trying to tackle an ancient, volcanic mountain of bigness that appears to be on the precipice of destroying us all.
So…yeah…the words haven’t exactly been flowing.
Over the years, Pat Does Words has become my little corner to process the world and my place in it. I’ve told silly stories and sad stories. I’ve sparked a few important conversations and I’ve done some healing.
But now it seems like the amount of shit that needs to get processed is too great. It’s jamming the system. The system itself has also been turned upside down and I appear to have lost the user manual. The IT department is on holiday and the electricity to the building has been cut off.
So what’s the prescription for such a situation?
The first step is always the same and it’s painfully simple (though I have an uncanny ability to complicate it). Step One is always to sit and move my fingers across the keys. The first bit of movement usually leads to a little more movement which usually leads to more movement and more movement until finally an idea germinates. That tiny seedling of an idea can then be watered and given space and time to grow. Once the idea is a little more mature, it’s just a matter of shaping it into something presentable and reminiscent of me.
That’s the prescription. That’s all I can do. That’s also one of the things I do best.
I can’t end racism and I can’t stop a pandemic and I can’t unseat a president.
But what I can do is lean into the thing that awakens my heart.
I can do words.
Those words can then go do what they need to do. They can send the tiniest ripples out into the universe. They may be a balm or a spark, the littlest molecule of healing. Or they may just float away into the ether.
Perhaps if enough of us do that – lean into that which wakes our soul – often enough, we could slowly chip away at the mountain of bigness before us. I’d like to think our world will look better for it. We could create a chorus of healers and seekers and revolutionaries simply by answering the call of our hearts and leave a more just and equitable world behind us.
- ”Shopping around” is a quaint term to describe the act of begging people to pay attention to you, see desperation, pleading, whoring
Well said, Patrick. There is a lot of bigness happening right now – so much that it gets really heavy to hold it all, and exhausting to give all their due attention. xo
Exactly! I tell myself that this fear is a good thing because it means we’re paying attention.
Amen. Nice piece, thanks!
Thanks Jon!
I’ve been feeling a similar overwhelming fear. Thank you for your words, Patrick! You’re right – ‘lean[ing] into that which wakes our soul’ instead of dwelling on things we cannot necessarily control; I think that’s the best we can do.
I think so many of us are feeling the same thing. The world seems insurmountable right now. Maybe we just need to narrow the scope of our world.