#113: what if my writing wants to start a passionate & sexy love affair, but I'm stuck over here doubting myself like a student of flopology, when I could in fact be getting down with the muse(s)?

what if your writing wants to see you more than once a week? what if it is deadass in love with you frfr and wants to experience life with you, like each and every day?

(this was originally posted on threads, but I don’t fully understand what tf threads even is, or how it is different to posts, so I’m posting it here as well, like the fabulous diva I am, i love you all! hope this resonates, keep slaying, divas!)

Photo by Chris Carzoli on Unsplash

Hello my loves,

I hope you're having the beginnings of a delicious Saturday.

I'm manifesting cozy vibes, thick books, beautiful succulent flowers, yummy snacks, and the hot warmth of the sun, bathing your body with love and abundance.

I haven't posted a thread since 2023. Time is such a fascinating thing. I hope another two years don't pass between this one and the next. I'm much more active on Posts & Notes, as you may know.

I'm writing this because, by chance, after many months of avoiding Substack for fear of shame that I had nothing ready to share, I finally faced my fears and just opened the website.

When I did, I chanced on the aforementioned thread from 2023 and saw such eloquent, thoughtful, and truly kind responses from you all, my wonderful readers.

You are always reminding me why I love this platform, why I love sharing art together, in community.

What a beautiful thing it is, and I feel lucky and grateful that you hold space for my being, even in the times when I am away or kept prisoner to my fear, self-doubt, anxiety, and depression.

Writing lately has been going somewhat relatively well, but I always wish there was more of it.

I've been working on my novel project sporadically, with the aim of moving from a few days of writing per week to daily morning writing stretches of an hour or more.

I've also been harbouring a desire that I will finally write a new Substack essay to share with you all. Trust me there's been about 25+ false starts.

All of these half formed ideas, half baked, swirling around in my drafts. None of them feeling good enough. I don't know why it's so hard for me to press send. I don't fear you. You all have been so kind to me. I think I fear myself. What I'll think of my myself, if I press send on something that isn't or that doesn't feel like it's the best of my ability. That mentality is keeping me stuck and is clogging up the pipes of my art, which are dreaming of effortless flow, that feels so close, and yet so f**king far away.

It's been 7 months since my last essay, and I am praying that I get the courage to face my fears and publish something new (or finally press send on something old) very soon.

Maybe even this week? Let's manifest together.

I need your spiritual energy to co-usher me out of my rut. I am calling in the courage to face my anxiety head on. To take action and let whatever I make be good enough. To stop avoiding and start doing. It's so much easier said than done.

I was watching an online lecture yesterday about how anxiety is often the byproduct of avoidance, and I felt that clearly within my creative anxieties, which so often stem from my fear of just sitting down to face the work.

To face what is being asked of me by the universe.

To face my own inabilities and my own talents.

To face all of it, and despite how I may feel, to create anyway, as is my birthright, and as is yours.

These fears are almost immediately alleviated when I start the actual process of writing, when I push past the avoidance, when the pain of the avoidance is greater than the pain of sitting down to do it, and then after the session concludes, I feel so much joy. I coast on the high of that small victory for sometimes entire days, and then, sadly, the cycle repeats. Again and again.

Maybe there's something poetic, in a way, about an artist who is constantly in a state of forgetting, but who somehow always manages to find their way back home, eventually. Like those stories of people who've had tragic accidents and lost the entirety of their memories, only to fall in love again, with the same person they loved before the pain, before the separation, before all that trauma.

Currently, as I write this, I'm in Spain—Barcelona specifically—sitting at the desk in my living room and looking out on the sun as it crests over the busy streets below.

There are always sounds: the sounds of laughter, arguments, lovers bickering, the whir of motors, and the ever-ululating seagulls who fly above the townspeople scanning for abandoned snacks.

It is a beautiful city, unusually cross-generational, filled with vibrant life in each winding street of the Gothic Quarter, which wraps mazelike over the palm of my neighborhood, extending out into the ample fingers of the various piers, which give way to beaches and bodies, and then that ever flowing infinite blue.

I always feel best when I close to water.

The thing is, I have so much I want to say, and maybe that is why I've been avoiding you.

I feel guilty, a very serious and painful gut kind of guilt, when I think about how long it's been since I've published an essay.

Have writers since the beginning of time felt this way? This gnawing sense that they are never doing enough?

Maybe it's just par for the course.

I mean, I have published hundreds of essays on this platform, hundreds of notes, and a handful of threads, but no amount of publishing ever feels like enough.

Maybe there is a beauty to that.

Maybe my writing wants to be with me for all of my days.

Maybe it'll never be enough, like the way you can never get enough of someone you truly love.

Maybe my writing doesn't want to only see me on the weekends.

Maybe my writing doesn't want to be a lost lover, a former friend, or even a casual acquaintance.

What if my writing doesn't want to see me only once a week or worse, once a month?

What if my writing wants to be with me every single day of my life. What if my writing is madly in love with me?

It's asking me to love it fully and completely, to be there for it always, to bear witness to its fanciful habitations, to engage in a passionate love affair that spans decades and doesn't take time off.

My writing wants a love that is certain, that sheds avoidance like a husk.

I'm trying to see it that way—that the ache I feel in my gut is a sign that I miss my love, and I know my love misses me, and I want to close the gap between us so that our relationship can exist in flow. Because when I write, I *do* feel so much better.

There is a quiet peacefulness in my step when I regularly write. I feel less anxiety, I sleep without nightmares, I am less impatient, I feel less sadness.

It is as if this balm, this salve, this literal potion making remedy is saying, "I am your elixir!" "I am everything you've been seeking in this life!" and all I have to do is say: YES.

Again and again.

Each day.

Committing and choosing what I chose before.

And it won't matter about the money or the awards or the fame or the publishing credits or any of it, because all that matters is the love—right here, right now—this connection between me and this divine being, this otherworldly thing that waits for me, yearns for me, pines for me, and wants so desperately (as do I) to DANCE, to be free, to wander, to explore together, to not be kept so apart by my anxieties and my avoidance and, quite frankly, my fear of commiting to a specific life.

This love wants me to get out of my head and into my body, to feel again, to step out of all this overthinking, and instead boldly jump into a life of certainty.

My writing wants me to give *all* of myself to it. Hasn't it done the same? It's been there for me all of my days. Through everything. Every breakup, every death, every happiness, every joy. There has always been that voice—the voice of my writing—the voice of the Muse begging me to speak, to emote, to feel, to face it, to face the thing, to know that it is okay, that we're going to get through this, that we're are in this thing together. That I am not alone.

And writing, by commiting to it, by making my relationship to it non-negotiable, that repeated excising of my emotions, that habitual and consistent work, that is the practice that will free my mind.

And I know it, I just do, that by doing so, I'll actually have MORE energy for all of my other scattered interests, not less.

By committing to that marriage, to a daily love, I'll finally free up the space and time to think about my hobbies with joy, without the crushing weight of indecision, because I will already know my highest artistic commitment has been made, unmuteably so, and I will be free to PLAY in the abundant ether, all the other things I do so enjoy: chess, poetry, songwriting, singing, guitar, bass, drawing, painting, film, reading, travel, time with friends and family, cooking, drawing, and so much more.

All of those things will open up and become things my writing and I will get to do together and I won't feel this indecision or anxiety or avoidance, because the foundation of my life will be certain, it will be true, and it will be fixed, beautifully so.

And all the things that I so often feel guilt about will be things I can finally enjoy, because my life will have a sense of balance, and engaging in one form of creativity won't feel like some kind of betrayal to the other.

And all the hours I squander worrying about if I should write will be alleviated with the knowledge that I am. That I am showing up, each and every day, for the thing I love.

I don't know, I just have this feeling about it.

That if I even just give an hour of myself each morning, even just as little as a non-negotiable hour, that somehow all the other aspects of my life will suddenly unfold with ease, because the level of my committment to my writing will be undeniable. You know what I mean?

I'm curious.

How is for you?

How does this all work for you?

What's your relationship to your writing look like?

What is your great creative love story?

In the reponses to this, I would love to know what your creative process looks like, how it feels, what it is asking of you.

What feels like your highest love and the thing that you want to deeply commit to?

Or maybe you are delightfully polyamorous (which is awesome) and have multiple great creative love affairs, which I think is fabulous.

I want to invite you to share your experiences and thoughts and ideas below in the replies.

And I invite you to lovingly respond to and affirm one another, as well, if you feel called to do so.

I think we are most powerful when we are in community with one another. <3

Anywho, this is what has been on my mind today. I miss you all. I'm officially done with my around-the-world ship voyage, so now I'll be back to consistent Wi-Fi, as I return to living on land.

It was quite an intense journey (in a good way). We went to Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Morocco, Spain, and Germany!!!

I'm still processing it—it doesn't feel real.

But essays are percolating.

I have so many things I want to say and share.

I have so many dreams and ideas and seeds that are being planted in my creative garden, and I'm excited to watch them grow to fruition in the form of words, songs, poems, essays, books, and more.

If you're reading this, please know that I love you and I am thankful for you. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for caring enough to spend your time reading this. I hope that today brings you peace and ease and joy. And that you remember how magnificent you are—now and always.

Much love,

Alex