Give Up the Funk

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm in a funk. Not a state of depression, just... just a funk. When my head gets too full of too many things - all of which I tend to internalize - I get funked. My thinking and creative processes get all gummed up, gunky, funky. Add to that the fact that it feels like October here in the Pacific NW today. Not that that's such a big deal to me. I like the cold weather, and I'm all for the rest of the world not having to share the necessity of Barb Black in a tank top. It's just that I feel like I possibly slept through a few months and it's left me feeling like I've somehow lost time, lost opportunity, lost... I don't know what. Gunky. Funky.

I've been walking by and/or sitting at this computer most of the morning, waiting for words to come, waiting for some grand revelation. I've sifted through prompts on other blogs. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I took a shower. I wandered around in my studio. I had breakfast. Still nothing. And yet, for some reason I still feel the need to create, to write, to do something. Why is it so difficult for me to say, "Hey, this is how you are today. Give it all a rest. Read a book. Watch stupid crap on TV like the rest of the world does." Why is it so difficult for me to say, "Look, you don't need to be creative today." Why is that? Gunky. Funky.

Maybe because I'm afraid? Maybe I fear that if I'm not standing here, waving whatever banner I've got in my hands, that I'll be forgotten? Or maybe I'm afraid that if I step away for a day I'll find that it's all been an illusion, that my creative abilities were just daydreams? Maybe it's just that annoying, rather misguided work ethic that was drummed into my head from the first moment I breathed air. You know the one: "only lazy people sit still." Gunky. Funky.

Oh, and trust me. I know exactly how to trick myself out of this feeling. The thing is, I'd really like to know why it's there, mostly because it's such an unusual event for me to feel like this. If I trick myself out of it, I can't properly dissect it. It's good to feel things, as long as we allow ourselves to really feel them, and as long as we use the feeling as a tool toward finding balance. Really, you can't have balance if half of the teeter-totter is missing, y'know? Gunky. Funky.

So this is a good thing. Well, a goodish thing. 'Sides... ain't nothin' like a decent excuse to turn up the volume on some good bluesy funk music. Like we need an excuse.

I gotta give up the funk. Gotta turn this muthah out. Gotta tear the roof off the suckah...