Nothing more to say – the secret brain

“And that’s all I have to say about that.”
– Forrest Gump –

I haven’t contributed much, if anything, to Thoughtwrestling recently. While I have had the odd post on my own blogs, I haven’t contributed much there either. I’ve done more housekeeping than writing. So I have to ask myself, “Why is that?”

It’s simple: I’ve run out of things to say. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more to be written, looked at, studied and wondered about. It simply means that for me, I’ve nothing more to say.

Every so often recently, I’ve found myself with an idea about creativity or writing and have started to put a post together. In almost every case, however, I quickly get a sense of redundancy. “I’m sure I wrote about this before …”

And I have. I do a quick search and find that, yes indeed, I have written a post on it. More often than not, it’s a better post than the one I’ve tried to begin. And again I have to ask, “Why is that?”

The quick answer is, I don’t know. But I do suspect a few things and I’ve nailed it down to two, one a negative reason and the other positive.

The negative reason is that I am distracted by too many other priorities, and the accompanying anxiety about getting them accomplished effectively. The result has been that whereas before I was probably doing too much blog writing, now I’m not doing enough. I was too unbalanced one way and now I’m too unbalanced the other. Or am I?

The brain’s secret life

While the negative reason is genuine, to a degree, I don’t think it is the over-riding reason. The positive reason is this: I want to do something else. That’s the over-riding reason. The odd thing is that I wasn’t really aware of that desire.

On my blog Writelife, I write about writing, more or less. On Thoughtwrestling I write about creativity, more or less. I think the key to “I want to do something else” is in those two sentences.

If I am writing about writing and about creativity, I am not doing them. I’m talking about them; I’m not being them. (Yes, it’s not quite that simple – writing and creativity are part of writing about something.)

A post I was toying with (and I’m sure I’ve written this before) was titled, “You are what you do; not what you say you do.” This post is kind of about that.

The brain is a wonder. It works on things constantly and we’re utterly unaware of it. Then one day – poof! – something pops into our head, seemingly out of the blue. The truth is, it has been there all along. The brain has simply decided to finally let you in on it.

It turns out my diminished posting is not about running out of things to say; it’s about wanting to say something else and in another way. During this period of feeling disengaged, I’ve actually been engaged on something else. I’ve mulled and I’ve studied and I’ve wondered and I’ve jotted down notes and on and on.

It also turns out that all my posting on writing and creativity relate to what I want to do, which is be creative and write in other ways. I loosely refer to where my head has been and what I’d like to do as The Impractical Pursuits Project. I would tell you more but the secret brain has yet to give me all the details.

My point in this post is to repeat a belief I’ve referred to before: we never dry up. We never run out of things to say. Creativity will never be exhausted as a subject, if only because it is such a mysterious process.

When we appear to dry up, the secret brain continues to work.

That’s all I have to say. (For now.)

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