Elusive Inspiration

Inspiration can be so elusive. Gray skies, then the clouds clear, and light cracks across the sky, leaving a trail of soul-affirming blue in its wake. Other times, a piece of music, a glance exchanged, or just time passing – and all of a sudden, all the existential questions melt away, and I am only this moment, and I have everything I need; of course I do. Then, only then, do I feel the fullness necessary to create.

For about the past decade of my life, I’ve struggled with clinical depression and anxiety. I’m not sure where this illness enters and exits — where the boundary lies between chemical distortion and the regular tides of moods washing through me. This past week, I felt out of sorts – maybe it was adjusting to cold gray New York on the heels of my week in the sun; maybe it was hormones; maybe it just was.

Meanwhile, I was offering friends career advice, and pitching a proposal for a new project, and enjoying the city’s cultural offerings – by all appearances, life was moving forward, and life was good. And life is good. But this afternoon was the first time in a week that I felt like writing; and so I am.

I’m a big proponent of writing whether you feel like it or not, but not (for my taste) in a public space. Why ask for your attention if I don’t have anything to say? But then I ran into a friend last night, and she said, “You know, I’ve been reading your blog” – and I think that’s what snapped me out of my funk.

This blogging is a strange business – so intimate and so distant all at once. I write here because I want to inspire you, to connect – because I’ve yet to find a more meaningful way to spend my life than to write something and have it mean something to someone. Whether it inspires you to action, or just reflection – whether some small part of you thinks, or feels, “me, too” – whatever your response, we are connecting, and that is something that I know, deep in my bones, is meaningful. It’s like the glorious absence of a question.

And so I thank the gods of inspiration for returning to me on this Saturday afternoon, as the light fades, and the sounds of a game of basketball play like a drumbeat across the street. A drumbeat, a heart beat – the lives of other people, in connection to mine.

Thanks.