Back to Breathing.

I have not written a poem, a story, a novel...in so long...

I attribute this great block to being entirely too content.

When a writer is too content, a strange thing occurs:

Life suddenly becomes this day-to-day routine of work, activity, and sleep. They aren't too happy, they aren't too sad. They are nestled contentedly between the fullness of both polar emotions. It is an equator of sorts.

This equator is possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to a writer.

I am a writer, and it has finally happened to me.

I sit around every day, waiting, hoping some crazy tragedy or fit of elation comes to me. My best work has come from the deepest moods one could never wish to possess. My best lines were penned in my darkest despair, or my highest ecstasy.

I used to be an utter nihilist. My entire life was centered around my own pleasure. I took what I wanted, I threw away what I didn't want. I played music night and day, I took drugs and snorted anything I could get my hands on. I had my fill of men and women. I chanted from the Book of the Dead. I cried in misery for nights on end, fearing death and illness. I couldn't have looked in the mirror and seen anything uglier if I had squinted harder.

I was a hot paradox of emotions, an utter freak, and I could not have felt more alive--more free from chains.

NEVER, when I have been contented, did I write anything memorable.

I am in this limbo today. It makes my heart heavy to only think about it.

My financial life is stable. My romantic life is stable. Everything is so stable, stable, stable--bland, bland, bland...

My pen is like my very breath.
My breaths give me life.
I want to be alive again.
I want to be in pain again, or flying again.
I want something so vivid that it haunts me in dreams.

I want my identity back.