jojothemodern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jojothemodern) wrote2014-02-16 11:11 am
jojothemodern) wrote2014-02-16 11:11 am
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February 16, 2014
Started reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby's personal account of living with locked-in syndrome. It's a brief little book, written over ten months as Bauby blinked his left eyelid- one of the last parts of him that he could move- and dictated to someone who penned one letter at a time.
There were days, early on in his paralyzed condition, when he believed that he would recover.
"Indeed, my roving mind was busy with a thousand projects: a novel, travel, a play, marketing a fruit cocktail of my own invention. (Don't ask for the recipe; I have forgotten it.)"
Then I remind myself- it isn't like I don't try to write, draw, create anything by any means. Everything feels so tiring and heavy. And pointless. Pretty much no matter what I am doing I sense the tug to do something more important. (Unless i am doing dishes or laundry. Those things are important, because they are useful.)
Trying to create feels like a waste of time itself. Just staring at the laptop screen and telling myself to reach for my sketchbook. Telling myself to open Evernote. Try. Try. Telling myself to try. That takes time too.
If I could not create, if the opportunity to even try dropped away from me, I'd want to do nothing more than write and write and write and draw.
There were days, early on in his paralyzed condition, when he believed that he would recover.
"Indeed, my roving mind was busy with a thousand projects: a novel, travel, a play, marketing a fruit cocktail of my own invention. (Don't ask for the recipe; I have forgotten it.)"
Day by day I feel my wasted time threading past me. Few things make me aware of that quite like this book.
I'm a little ashamed to even feel grateful for what I have, considering how I spend it all.Then I remind myself- it isn't like I don't try to write, draw, create anything by any means. Everything feels so tiring and heavy. And pointless. Pretty much no matter what I am doing I sense the tug to do something more important. (Unless i am doing dishes or laundry. Those things are important, because they are useful.)
Trying to create feels like a waste of time itself. Just staring at the laptop screen and telling myself to reach for my sketchbook. Telling myself to open Evernote. Try. Try. Telling myself to try. That takes time too.
If I could not create, if the opportunity to even try dropped away from me, I'd want to do nothing more than write and write and write and draw.