The faintest glimmer of the moon’s silvery light spills through the half shuttered windows of my bedroom as I begin this entry. I suppose this is somewhat appropriate.The night time is for dreamers and I am nothing, if not one of the lost dreamers of dusk. I build fanciful sandcastles in the hemisphere of my imagination like it was my job.Interestingly enough, that’s what I’ve been trying to do all this time. Take my penchant for words and make it into a job. One thing is for certain, it has not gone smoothly. This has proven to be one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken. Sometimes, if I am really, really lucky, I get snippets or lines which seem perfect for the poem or essay I’m working on but mostly I only get partial words or phrases which even if I can suss them out, don’t neatly fit into the puzzle of the piece I’m trying to create.

Additionally, my graduation from college did not prove to be the magical key to gainful  and rewarding employment I had hoped. After 9 months as an instructional aide at a middle school I am spending my summer sending out resume’s and filling out online job applications. So far I’m up to around 110 job applications without an interview. As you might imagine this is not a condition which lends itself to the creative process necessary for writing. It makes me wonder how some of the great giants in literature were able to pen such unbelievably imaginative and magical tales while living in abject poverty. They were better men and women than myself for that alone. 

Let’s go ahead and check off the rest of the boxes under Murphy’s Law, shall we? Upon graduating from college I was immediately laid off the job I have had for the past six years. I actually felt OK about this initially as I believed my degree would make me more attractive to better paying employers. Unfortunately, I spent the next 15 months sending out around 400+ applications and resume’s! 

To my surprise friends I had considered ‘true blue’ became too busy to pick up the phone when I called. There’s an old English proverb which comes to mind. “In times of prosperity, friends will be plenty, in times of adversity, not one in twenty.” It has proven to be one of the most accurate quotes I have ever read.  I could go into great detail here, but to what end? Suffice to say I have learned anew the deeply regrettable experience of betrayal. It will probably not be the last time for me, but I pray I am never as gullible or as trusting as I have been in the past. Funny thing is how your enemies and detractors almost always enter the room with a smile. Still, karma is an immutable teacher and it has many lessons to teach and so I will let it repay my betrayers in kind. 

So within this confusion I have found myself unable to coax the fertile seeds of creativity to bloom sufficiently enough that I might harvest them. 

I’m presently working my way through Julie Cameron’s The Artists’ Way in an effort to re-discover the creative path I once tread so effortlessly. To be fair, the path was never clear and apparent and had been all but completely overtaken with the grass and weeds of self-doubt and indecision, but I still somehow knew how to get where I needed to go, even when the path seemed to have disappeared. Here’s to finding my way back again. Soon. 

More updates to come. Hopefully, better ones.

Time will tell.