on writing terribly, bathhouses, and a blogging crisis.

creativity

Jan 12

Written By Ashlee

I recently used a couple babysitting hours to visit a bathhouse. If you don't know what a bathhouse is, don't worry, I didn't either until I showed up. Asha Urban Baths is new in town, and when I saw their name pop up on Facebook a few times, I took it as a sign. Last week I booked a babysitter, threw my swimsuit and coverup in a backpack next to a half-empty spiral notebook, and off I went.

I was the only person there for 90 glorious minutes. The check-in girl commented on this fact, twice.

You're so lucky, she said.

I nodded silently, not sure if I should feel guilty about this or go buy a lottery ticket.

It felt like I was playing hooky from school, skipping out on my children and my inbox to sit in a gigantic tub of warm water all by myself. With my legs curled up under me on the step, I opened my journal and wrote "New Years Reflection" across the top, followed by a single mantra for 2017: work smarter, not harder.

I set my intentions for the year (slow down, remember to play, create for the joy of creating to name a few), and then I set some actual goals in three categories:

Take care of my body.Take care of my mind.Take care of my soul.

Under "take care of my mind" I wrote five things:

Writing night once a week.Read 17 books in 2017.Attend one creative conference this year.More "think" days.Blog again.

Blog. Again. Full recognition, on paper, that blogging is no longer a thing that I do.

I (somewhat unintentionally) stepped back from this space in 2016 to focus on growing Coffee + Crumbs, to work on the book, to save my marriage (that's a joke, or is it?), to see my friends, and to occasionally breathe into a paper bag away from my laptop.

I came back a few times when I had words swirling in my head and needed to put them somewhere. Like here and here and here. And it felt good to get those stories out. Familiar. Like when you visit your Grandma's house in the woods and it always smells the same and she has chocolate fudge waiting for you on the counter.

But it also felt a little awkward, a bit out of place, like when you slip on a dress you haven't worn in three years and look at yourself in the mirror. Does this still fit me? Is this even in style anymore? Am I pulling this off?

By the end of 2016, I was convinced of two opposite conclusions:

1) I need to stop blogging altogether. Make a formal announcement. RIP where my heart resides; you've had a good run.

and

2) I need to start blogging again. I miss it. I miss writing here. I miss writing, period.

This drummed up a lot of (first-world problem) confusion.

Where do I go from here? Do people even read blogs anymore? (Don't answer that.)

***

I remember last January making the resolve to cut back on my blogging with an internal pledge: only write when you have something to say.

And for 2016, I think I needed that, to be honest. There were a lot of business dealings in 2016: contracts, agreements, e-mails, new accounts, forms, statements, and on and on and on and on and on. 2016 was the year of the left brain; the year of We Need To Figure Out How To Make Money Or Bust.

But 2017? I want to do things a little differently this year.

I don't know if people still read blogs. I don't know if people still read this blog. But I do know that once upon a time, this was my writing home, and I felt comfortable and safe here. I could be honest. I could be silly if I wanted to be. I could write and hit "publish" and go about my day without thinking about it too much. Even more importantly: I felt accountable here. Whether lots of people were reading or hardly anyone was reading, I felt a responsibility to show up. I had a routine. I was disciplined. My attendance record was solid. In the span of blogging from 2009-2016 I even stopped calling myself a blogger and began calling myself a writer.

Come to think of it: that self-professed title change might be one of the greatest values this blog has ever culminated.

And I guess what I'm trying to say is ...

I miss it here. I can't pinpoint when this happened, but somewhere along the line in 2016, I got so bogged down in logistics and spreadsheets and e-mails, that I started to believe I had nothing worthwhile to say. Every time I sat down to write outside of a deadline or specific commitment, I was empty. Every time I sat down to write for me, to write for fun, to write for you, there were no words. Just fear and insecurity (can I call them Satan?) whispering in my ear: do you need to say that? You're adding to the noise; the world doesn't want or need your story right now.

Taking a break from writing is a slippery slope for me. I can only equate this to peanut butter cups. I'm talking about the dark chocolate ones from Trader Joe's, you know the kind that come in a tub? You pluck one out carefully. Just one. And then one turns into two and two turns into three, and six wrappers later, you feel both shame and satisfaction.

It's easy for me to skip writing for a day. Eh, I feel uninspired. I'll write tomorrow. And then tomorrow rolls around and there's a new episode of This Is Us on Hulu and that for sure sounds like a better naptime plan than writing. I'll write tomorrow! But tomorrow comes and I can't think of a good opening line for that essay floating around in my head so I give up on it altogether because the act of starting feels too damn hard. And then one day turns into one week and one week turns into one month and pretty soon I can't even remember how to write anything anymore because I cannot bear the thought of sitting down and writing something terrible.

I don't know what happened to me.

This isn't me.

This isn't my best creative self, which is terrifying to admit the year I am co-leading an entire course on creativity.

I wasn't going to complete the course myself because isn't that backwards for the teacher to become the student? But I went through the January lesson tonight and one of the assignments was to sit down and write two pages without thinking.

So here I am.

These are my two pages of not thinking. And I suppose now that I'm done I can shut my laptop, close my eyes, and dream the night away even though I may have written something terrible.