When the writing is dry

I sit at my desk and consider the fact that I have not written anything beyond a blog post in over a month. My novel sits in its folder, languishing in that guilt-filled pool of depression, where I tell myself I will write but cannot bring myself to type the words. The energy flows out through my fingers and into the universe, and I am but a dry noodle, baked in the sun unable to release the torrent that rages inside.

When the dry spell comes, it comes with a vengeance, a reminder that I am a fickle human being, and no amount of determination or willpower can save me from my own mental demons. I exorcise my pain and exhaustion with bursts of imagery, painted across the blog, dissecting the words of others, until I am left with this infantile reminder that I am yet again nothing. My words are lost in the avalanche of information that barrages our attention each moment we open a tab in our browser. How arrogant of me to think my words matter amongst this deluge of everything that ever was and every will be that assaults our senses and strips us bare before the gods of the universe. We are but specks on a planet, hurtling through spacetime, a tiny drop in the vast ocean, and our futile and brief lives soon forgotten.

Am I a fool for thinking my words matter in the vast scheme of things? That what I unveil will strike the hearts of another enough to spark change, even on the minutest scale? When you step back and see the universe in all its thirteen billion year glory, it is hard to remember that our fleeting lives upon this wet earth holds meaning and worth.

And yet it does, because we are conscious of it. We are conscious and alive and experiencing this universe as it stands right at this moment. This moment that will never come again. It is not that our words are futile and meaningless because we are but specks in the vast scheme of the universe; no, as it is said by Ambassador Delenn of Babylon 5:

“The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe needs a change of perspective.”

Yes, we are the universe knowing itself, the emergent consciousness, and it is through us that the universe sees itself in all its glory and agony and mystery. Through the words we throw out into the ocean of spacetime, we live and change, our creativity breathing life not just into our creations but into our very souls. Our works invigorate not just our own minds and dreams but those of others, the expression of energy that catapults from person to person, until it expels into the universe itself. Energy that is neither created nor destroyed, but cycling, in this infinite loop of possibility.

We are the creators. And let us not forget it.