Are words something possible to run out of?
“Me—run—out—of—words.”
“Words run out of me.”
Hsshdidiidniansdiw, ommoifhqoiqjijfd (keyboard strike, keyboard strike).
A detached and dismembered voice spews. My arteries had formed a blockage from my brain to my hands, killing any hope of worded life. Built by pressure and bricks of perfectionism, the obstruction had taken my vessel captive. A deficiency in confidence ran my creative shores dry, revealing I simply didn’t feel like anything more than what I could create.
The pretty words that once came so easily, didn’t.
If Joan Didion were word play, I was Eve Babitz, tangled in a fraught friendship or a love and hate affair with my own sentences. Mutual jealousy and perpetual longing tailed quietly behind resentment, spurting haphazardly, like magnets that can’t decide whether to meet or repel at each end.
In music coverage I felt paralyzed, missing the brazen way I stumbled through content matter just six months prior. An empty page or blinking cursor felt like a landmarker for bad!
Not quite!
Or could be better!
Burnout is something most creatives tell you to just “get over,” like the flu or a scraped-up knee. Was this burnout, or just an excuse for my dry spell — an internal fountain once spewing infinite words?
What happens when something seemingly innate and natural gets taken from you?
In combination with my own discontentment (and an approaching content deadline) I spoke with a female songwriter about her own experience. Read my companion feature on SHABANG Battle of the Bands winner Annie Pagel here.
This story originally appeared in the Burnout Issue of The Peak. View the full issue here or more stories on our page.