Qwertyphobia

Qwertyphobia, I deem thee: for calling you writer's block is too cliché and a precursor to a very lame excuse.  Despite that I have spent the better part of twenty-five plus years banging away on your brethren and ancestors, today I am unable to lay even a delicate finger upon you.  For far too long I have neglected the flow of creativity to course through my fingertips upon your individual surfaces. I have squandered my depressions with electronic communications, tremendously boring and always impersonal; I have punched calculated numbers representing someone else's wealth and dreams; and can say that I have wasted every last click and clack at the behest of others. 

Essentially, I sold my muse for false security and hope of a steady paycheck. I wrongfully accused responsibility for extinguishing my sparks of individuality, and sentenced my creativity to captivity.  I tore down a dream and built the equivalent of a strip mall in its place.  I gentrified my own aspirations, and I have laid the blame for these actions at every foot but my own.  

There was no fork in the road, a crossroad, or a path option made available, the decision to grant my creativity parole came to me during a recent coronation in the dentist's chair.  As the clamor of drilling, filing, grinding, and whatever that jackhammer sound was doing to my number two molar, while adrift in the music blasting through my headphones - a feeble attempt to block the cacophony of carnage in mouth - the incessant bleeps and bloops of work related applications were continuously interrupting.  Can I not have some peace in my crowning moments?  Must I always be in attendance to the technical ailments of my coworkers?  Do I not see the irony that I am the one serving the servers with their incessant complaints of limited functionality and loss of memory, and their selfish need to always be turned on?

This was not the future the earlier version of me, some thirty years ago, would have imagined or allowed. That person was filling notebooks with ideas and stories and looking after his creativity with delicate care, proper grooming, and thorough maintenance. Of course, there was work and other odd jobs, but they were finite: they started and they ended and never followed you home. Moreover, there was no leash tethering you to anyone at any time.  If you were not in one place, you could not be easily found. The outgoing message on your answering device simply told those seeking your audience “I'm not here", and that was absolutely acceptable. 

Today there is a need for instant gratification and immediate contact which creates its own accompaniment of distraction, further extending the confinement of creativity.  A steady flow of words is easily kinked with a call, an email, a text, a social media notification, or some other non urgent event that we allow to dam our currents. Focus requires its own mastery of focus and discipline to squelch the static around us.  Yet, I continue to capitulate to every little bleep and bloop.  Given our collective responses to every noise emanating from our devices, we could easily reproduce Pavlov's test with a well connected adult and their constantly, connected smartphone. 

As my respective smartphone rang out those annoying bleeps and bloops like a town crier in the night, my dentist was diligently excavating away the damaged surface of my tooth.  For a moment I actually fretted over what those messages and texts were wanting to tell me.  What was wrong? Was I needed? Was there something I forgot to do? Was there something really broken? Did Timmy fall into a well.. again?  And in that same moment I thought to ask my dentist for a break in the action to check my phone. But, then I had to ask myself, what would be the direct consequence of that request? 

My dentist would have to stop her archaeological work, fetch my glasses - as the phone is as blurry as a scrambled cable channel to me without them - and then wait for me to either read my missives or read and respond to those missives. Meanwhile, she has a timetable for her day and other patients waiting in the lobby have heir own respective schedules.  

Am I that important? No. 

Should I be that important? Absolutely not. 

Do I really care what is happening at work when all my coworkers know I am volunteering for dental discomfort? The answer was slow to come, but it was assuredly no.

These thoughts were pursued by the profound question of how did I get here? And no, it was not the pistachio shell in the protein bar that cracked my molar or the vehicle that I used to get to the dentist's chair, as correct and literal those smartass answers are, they only serve as poor humored distractions from the real question.  When did I pack the dream of writing away?  When did I agree that it was time to simply stop?  Why am I thinking of this as I feel bits of my tooth landing on my cheek?

The real question is  when will be the right time to write again?  When would it be right to start? Why does it have to be planned? Why not stop playing games, stop living vicariously through others in the social stratosphere, and maybe use the smart phone to construct something other than another boring email concerning the servers and corporate moguls I serve, and the perpetual work that dominates my time, because it has followed me home.  I have to start somewhere and that starting line is making certain that outside of the finite working hours, all work nonsense needs a restraining order slapped upon it. 

The time is nigh. The tether must be severed. A line must be etched in the sand, and one side is work, and the other is me. I am not defined by the work I do, and the job should not be so codependent on me. There needs to be a defined separation of work and my state of mind. 

In phase one, I unearthed the notebooks and ideas that were once part of the care and nourishment - the appropriate recommended dietary allowance - of maintaining a healthy and balanced work and writing life.  However,  thanks to the connected rodent, firmly affixed aside my keyboard, my abilities to hold and use a pen have been severely injured over the years. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the real affliction of the 21st Century and now I have to look upon the keyboard as an implement of good, and dissociate the evil side it has when performing duties for the .

Today begins phase two as I relight the pilot light. I cannot expect it to thaw out the dormant writer immediately, but I had hoped that I could produce something, anything, even a simple sentence, but the keyboard mocks me.  It tells me its little secret - it is good enough for writing, but made for work.  Yet, a sea of notebooks, napkins, post-its, and paper scraps, scrawled with ideas from long ago, are littered around me, encouraging me like Alice to pick one and drink it in.  I tell myself to simply put one word in front of another, and then rinse and repeat as needed.  

I start by making many apologies to my younger self.  To atone for my digressions, I must put work and all exterior distractions on a very strict diet, and embrace the reclaimed time to allow my creativity to acclimate with the changed world since its incarceration.  As stated, the pen is currently not a viable option and I must look past my fear of a personal qwerty to get the stockpiled words out and maybe schedule an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon.

For now, I shall force my fingers into their rightful places, put one word in front of another, rinse and repeat as needed, and see what dreams may come.