20: Blocks. Blocked. Blockages.

I've had a serious case of the blocks.

I’ve had a serious case of the blocks.

Last year was a rough year for me - one that I’m not sure I want to fully talk about here - and as life and situations called for more and more of my attention, it felt like my brain couldn’t quite make the space to write. All my focus went into the day to day. Even when I felt like I could use the release that came from writing personally or journaling, the barrier between my thoughts and the page was hard to over come. Sometimes the thoughts felt so loud and unwieldy that it was hard to even know where to begin. If a friend said this to me, I’d gently tell them to start anywhere and that the flow would come from the act of doing. But for myself, the barrier felt like it would get higher and higher every time and I wasn’t sure how to get over it. Or if I’d have the energy to do it.

Some of the big things that happened over the last eight months include going full time at work - I’ve been working at a local market / wine shop. We spent the holidays in California where I worked a very busy season, including days building bouquets in the new flower shop, which very excitingly opened in November. My mom and I took a holiday to London for my birthday. It was a lovely break. I swam in the cold, cold Ladies’ Pond on my birthday and then had an amazing pub lunch after which is exactly how I’d wanted to start a new year. Tiny Cat had surgery to remove a lump on her belly which turned out to be mammary cancer. It’s very aggressive, we’ve been told, but they got good margins and didn’t see that it had spread anywhere else so that was good news. She’s been doing great and is currently sleeping in the sunny spot as I type. There were other health scares with people close to me.

We had the devastating Los Angeles fires just after New Year’s. It’s very hard to describe the grief, devastation, and loss that so many of our communities are currently facing. The Altadena community is very close to my heart - I’ve been a small part of this community for over a year and a half as I’ve been working within the community. Two days after the fires started, I went in for my own surgery to remove a spot of skin cancer from my forehead. I’d had a similar spot removed in the spring of 2022 but it came back last April. It grew so much faster and was bigger than the first time. I spent a lot of last year going to doctor’s appointments and then waiting for insurance to approve my next referral or biopsy or procedure. The surgery went really well. They got it all out, had good margins, and it’s been healing really well. I took most of January to rest and recuperate. All of my hats have been getting a lot of good wear.

While my company navigates how best to reopen the store from the fire and how to get back on their own feet, I’ve been navigating unemployment and writing so many cover letters for open positions, just throwing anything out there to see if anything sticks, as I think about what could happen next. I’ve gotten into the bad habit of checking my email too many times a day, hoping for an update. There have been lots of cat snuggles when she decides it’s time to step away from the computer so we can read on the couch instead; and there was a week long break in Newport Beach when my parents came to visit, with walks on the beach and lots of delicious food. And then on Monday, I discovered that someone had hit the back of my car while it was in our garage so now get to figure that out.

It’s been a lot.

And through it all, I’ve felt like this is the exact time when I most need to sit down and write because I need to process it all. But the reality is that I’ve felt very tired and kind of dried up - like, the creative spirit and energy and ideas have shriveled. I did manage to finish one big project in the fall. Carving out pockets of time after dinner or before work or on the one day off between holidays. That felt really good, to feel like I was working on something for myself, when I hadn’t felt like I’d done that in a long time.

I thought of last year as if I were planting seeds in a garden. I didn’t set any resolutions so instead I thought of each thing that I was trying or doing as if it were a new seed that might eventually grow into something. Like, working with flowers at work and eventually doing some of the flower buying was a seed. Applying to a writing competition was a seed. Getting back into swimming, a thing I’d been wanting to do for years, and showing up to do laps in the pool twice a week was a seed. About half way through the year I felt like I’d abandoned my garden. I didn’t feel like I was watering it enough. It didn’t feel like anything was growing. It felt a little bit sad, like the couple things that had tried to grow were now dried weeds from too much sunshine and not enough attention. But as we’ve settled into this year, I began to think that maybe last year was all about preparing the soil. Maybe it wasn’t actually about seeing the growth immediately. Maybe it was about putting time and nutrients into the soil so that I could see the growth of new flowers this year, and for many more years to come.

I went out to the balcony the other morning. Tiny Cat at my feet, face up to the sun, eyes closed. Birkenstocks were on and so was my new wide brimmed hat. I’d gone out to finally trim back the dead, dried flowers of last winter’s snowdrops. I’d heard that if I let the flowers die and then cut them back that my bulbs would re-flower the next winter. Well, I’d put the pot outside, around this time last year, and then forgot about it. This was a task that I’d been meaning to do for at least ten months. What I wasn’t expecting was that when I finally grabbed my shears and went outside to do it that the snowdrops would already be growing. I was met with sturdy, green shoots coming through the soil, pushing aside the dried flowers. We’d had a big rain a couple days earlier and the bulbs seemed so happy for it. Without realizing it, the flowers had been preparing to grow all this time, even though I’d neglected it.

I was so happy to see this new growth. I felt so proud of my little plant.

It was a much needed reminder that so often we don’t know when our efforts will produce results, or what string of actions will lead us to that big ah-ha moment or that next opportunity. It reminded me to keep trying and to keep doing small step after small step because someday those efforts will produce beautiful flowers from seeds that were maybe planted long ago. (It’s also a good reminder that we all need to stay hydrated in order to grow.)

For now, I’m going to watch as my snowdrops bloom and try to enjoy the rest of the sunny winter days before spring fully arrives. It feels like it’s already on our doorstep. I’m going to make a fresh cup of tea - my current one grew cold while writing this - and get back to writing a couple more cover letters, trying to think of new ways to describe my skills, and hit a tone that’s informative yet not dry. It can feel like such a time waste to write letters that I’m not sure anyone reads. Being back in this cycle makes me feel like I should know so much more about how to find a job and yet it still feels like such an enigmatic process. When I need a break from a glowing computer screen, I’ll go in search of the cat and see if she’ll accept some pets and be open to a conversation. She’s been very chatty lately.

And then, maybe, just maybe, the other blockages will start to ease and disappear.