Going to war.

An empty journal gives me something of the same feeling of anxiety as an empty writing pad: right now it's all potential, and I could fill it with amazing things. But my mind tells me I probably won't, and so I sit and look at it and worry that I'll do something wrong. Whatever I mean by that.

I've made at least five or six attempts at starting something here, and then done the journaling equivalent of throwing it across the room in frustration. But I think the thing that really pushed me towards this place is the fact that I'm feeling mentally all run down and bent out of shape, and I need to push myself to create things, organise my thoughts, drive myself forward.

I'm a writer, but I'm also dragging myself slowly out of one of the larger pits of anxiety and depression that I've experienced in my life, and there hasn't exactly been a lack of those. A few months ago there was possibly not a film I could watch without having a panic attack and I do believe I spent more time thinking about death than about what was going on in my life, and the idea of doing anything much left me mentally paralysed. I haven't written - that is to say, sat down and really worked on a piece, tweaked all the ideas and polished the prose until I was happy - for the better part of a year, at least, and I think I'm more or less done beating myself up for that, but I've got a long way to go in recovering any kind of sense of my own ability, too. In total honesty, I think I've got a long way to go just in recovering some kind of a sense of self.

& maybe this is some part of that. If I'm not sure what will happen here that's probably because I'm not sure what I need.

Posting this despite misgivings because I have misgivings about everything right now and one simply has to start somewhere. So we'll try here.

OK?