BLOCK

The stumbling block, or perhaps the path block.  Sometimes it's hard to build up a momentum.  The spark of imagination lives and dies before I can grab a pen and put it to paper.  It's disheartening to be gripped and shaken alive with dire necessity and purpose one minute only to see it fade, and vanish like the finite life of a matchstick, the next.

I often carry a pen and notebook for those rare moments of lively absorption in that delicate bubble of inspiration but I have been caught unaware in times past.  Without pen or without paper, I could scramble to get it down on my phone, fingers and thumbs stabbing the keypad furiously.  I could use shorthand but that is often a bad idea as I find myself asking, What did I mean there?

Words end up scribbled on pieces of paper, scraps and receipts and loose pages.  A thread that will hopefully lead back through the labyrinth to that illuminating thought.  But what about those times when I can't scribe the idea.  Lost usually.  It floats to the ether.

The times of misspent or disused inspiration come back to haunt me during the quiet dull hours of stagnation.  The dreaded writer's block.  I crave the time to sit and scribe and yet when it comes round that I have an abundance of that coveted commodity, time, I cannot think of anything to write.  What is more I find the drivel that I put to paper nauseating to read.

What can one do to regain their footing or to dislodge that boulder blocking their train of thought and the path to promising pastures?  Friends have often times suggested relief and releases; jogging or some other form of physical activity, breaks away from the page to freshen the eyes and the mind, doodling, cups of coffee or tea, and of course, time heals all wounds and weathers the toughest rocks and blocks.