Huff

I am not in a good mood.

Which is odd, because I should be. I have job satisfaction at work, a job that affords me a car and a house-share. I can even afford to go to the gym three times a week, which is helping with my chiropractic problems. I can afford a chiropractor, even.

I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a Matrix thing - everything is too even, too uneventful, too boring. It’s not that it’s too good to be true, it’s just… there. It’ll always be just there.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m anhedonic. Things I used to enjoy doing don’t really bring me any joy. Of course this could just mean that my tastes have changed and I would no longer enjoy those things anyway. I mean, people change. But what if I am losing the ability to enjoy things? That worries me - it worried me all the way home from work yesterday in my 2 year old car. It went something like this:

I like writing. If I get the right idea I can write 6,000 words before I have to stop and check what time it is. This is how I pulled together all my notes, spare scenes and plans and wrote a 140,000 word novel over an Easter weekend. However it’s becoming increasingly difficult to write anything. I mean, I can, but I just don’t feel the pull I used to. There’s no muse, no catalyst, no unseen thing making me want to write about a favourite character. Does this mean I don’t have favourite characters any more?

I had 2. I mean, I wrote a whole novel about them - my own, not fan fiction. I’ve been trying to get it published since 2012, so on the whole I suppose you could call it a failure. But hey, let’s not dwell, but keep a stiff upper lip and keep trying, right? And I have been. But every so often you have to wonder why you’re just not getting it; of all the people who liked it, not one has taken it on. There’s a hint there, and I’m on the fence as to whether I should pack it all in as a bad job, or ignore all the signs and just keep trying to get it on a shelf somewhere, virtual or no.

But I digress. The characters in that book I felt were pretty fun and I enjoyed putting them through the ringer. However, at nearly all other things I feel apathetic. My go-tos in fan fiction haven’t really been blowing up my skirt either. And neither has anything else. I’m nearly a quarter into another original fiction novel, and every few months I come back to it, read it from scratch and enjoy it, and then when it stops I just think… Well, it was good but it’s just stopped. I don’t feel the need to finish it. I don’t feel the need to write or finish anything, for that matter.

That’s what I don’t like. That’s what makes me miserable at times - that’s the best word for it - miserable. There really nothing else in this universe that can truly cause the same amount of trodden-down, depressive apathy as listening to myself tell me that all my best writing days are behind me, and making me face the fact that I can’t seem to get up the will to do any more of it. I can’t leave unfinished stories alone - I’m constantly re-reading or trying to figure out how to carry them on, but I feel I can’t contribute anything more to anything, that when it runs dry it’s just… how it is.

And so it doesn’t go.