I used to write a lot here. I wrote most days, even when I worked full-time or was a full-time student and bartender. I found the moments to carve out and sit own in front of my computer, ready to share what was on my mind and make this “self-portrait in the form of the mundane” move ahead.

I really haven’t been writing for about a year.

A lot is to do with the feelings I had after Trump, but there are plenty of other reasons. I decided that I have two New Year’s Resolutions in 2018.

WRITE MORE

DON’T EVEN ATTEMPT TO TALK OVER MY STUDENTS

Those are the two. My fingertips and my vocal cords thank me, for the exercise and the lack thereof respectively.

I’ve been intermittently writing a novella about the destruction of worlds, but that will just have to wait. I want to make a list of why I’m not writing. Unedited bulletpoints ahead.

I’m not writing because….

• My POTUS is acting like a child on twitter
• My country might have completely lost the plot
• Trump is still President
• Oh god, Trump is still President
• I think that maybe travel blogging has hit its high point and is a dying art, replaced by endless Instagram posts
• I have Instagram to post on now
• I have camera and lens envy of basically all travel bloggers and my own equipment seems really underpowered these days
• I’ve been struggling a lot with anxious thoughts about being ‘good enough’ in the last year
• I simply didn’t have the energy when I worked in Busan after 46 class periods per week every week
• I was busy
• I was lazy
• I was bored of writing
• I was too tired when we arrived in Vietnam and kept falling asleep on the couch at 19:30
• I don’t really think that my travelling life is all that interesting sometimes (who wants to hear about a grocery store visit? even if it is in Vietnam or Korea or Iceland, it’s still a damn supermarket)
• Not enough whiskey
• Not enough coffee
• Too much covfefe
• Trump’s tweeting doesn’t warrant a response
• Other people have responded enough
• Writing about North Korean missile launches like I did in 2013 has lost its lustre somewhat now that WWIII seems to be in the pipeline
• I’ve been working on offline skills such as macrame, cooking, dealing with norovirus epidemics, and colouring mandalas
• I’ve been busy with family and friends
• I’ve been reading too much
• Writing requires something to say and I’ve simply been unable to find the words since about October 2016
• I’ve been listening to too many podcasts
• I’ve been trying to write a podcast
• I’ve failed at writing a podcast, because that, too, is writing (Damn!)
• I’ve been decorating our new apartment(s)
• It was Christmas
• It was New Year’s
• It was the solstice
• It was Tuesday
• I was napping ( I do live in Vietnam now after all)
• I was doing laundry
• I was cleaning
• I was sick with food poisoning and unable to rise from bed except to go to the toilet
• I was lighting candles
• I was lighting votives
• Step down
• Step down
• Wait, this is REM’s End of the World As We Know It
• Oh, shit, Trump might end the world as we know it

Annnnnnnnnnd….repeat for 13 months.

I’m going to try to put that stuff aside for writing in 2018.