The Day When Writing Feels Possible Again

What I've learned from not writing or sending emails for over 6 months.

Today, for the first time in a long-ass time, it feels possible to write.

I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I usually love Mondays. I love the sense of possibility & freshness a new week brings, the feeling of curiosity & excitement at engaging with the day and seeing what it brings.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve had that Monday feeling—which, actually, is really a Sunday night feeling, the feeling of a clear sink and coffee prepped and journals stacked and ready for new week—and what a fucking enormous relief to sink into it today.

I took my kids to school, starting a vibe by playing The Tragically Hip’s Live Between Us album in the car. I’ve learned that the soft animal of my body responds to music more than anything else, and that a good way to get into a flow state where I can write and create is to start by picking music.

A new docuseries on The Tragically Hip—the best Canadian band of all time—dropped this past week and it has felt so good to get into a groove with these tunes that have been part of my life and bones for over 25 years.

Paying attention to what my soft animal responds to, to what wakes her up and tickles her curiosity and helps her feel herself is the deepest practice in this season of my life. A week of diving into the old familiar grooves of The Hip, listening to albums on vinyl straight through, doodling lyrics on my journal pages has been a reliable way for me get into a good vibe & a state in which my body is willing to engage with risk, to play, to experiment, so it felt like the natural choice this morning.

The Hip never disappoints. With the first song, Grace Too, I ease into a familiar flow, sinking comfortably in my body as if it were a favorite, worn armchair. I keep the volume low so as to not offend the ears of my Gen Z kids, but soon they are dropped off at school and I finger drum on the steering wheel as I recite from memory Gord Downie’s legendary live soliloquies.

This is key: start the vibe in the car, get the brain engine going as I am driving Lunar Drive and seeing all the puppers taking their owners on morning walks. That way, when I get back home, I can keep the vibe going by tuning into the same music once I’m in the house.

The vibe is 100% what makes it possible to write. When I say “vibe” here I guess what I mean is a sense of connection & flow between my body, mind, and soul, and my surroundings.

For most of this year, the vibes have been off, as evidenced by the fact that this is the first Substack I’ve written since March. I haven’t felt able to write, and that has freaked me the fuck out, which makes the vibes even more out of reach, a gnarly self-perpetuating cycle that has been eating away at my soul.

This is what I’ve learned from over a half a year of not writing: when the vibes are right, when all relevant elements are humming along, it is unmistakeable, and writing feels not effortless, but possible. My system is intrigued and energized by the journey into the dark and unknown that is opening up a new Substack draft and starting to type.

When the vibes are off—that is, when my system & my surroundings are out of sync—writing can sometimes happen, but it’s effortful and exhausting, like pushing a boulder up a hill. It’s also hella confusing, like trying to run through a labyrinth and slamming into endless dead ends, getting more and more agitated and desperate as I go.

Not only does writing not really happen on a day like that, but string a few days like that in a row, and writing feels more and more laborious and futile, which means it gets scarier and even harder to try. That’s where I’ve been for—if I’m honest, for more than a year: stuck in the muck of feeling writing is impossible, mired more and more by a growing sense of doom. That I won’t be able to write again. That my business is fucked. That my dreams are dead.

The Fifth Spirit Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess

And listen—there have been very very good reasons why writing has felt impossible. I’ve been in a Moon season—the 19th card of the tarot’s Major Arcana is all about navigating in the dark, proceeding with very little illumination, trying to find our way through the unknown. The particular circumstances that have plunged me in this prolonged darkness have been health and relationship-related: figuring my way through the tangled web of symptoms of Autistic burnout, perimenopause, PMDD, and Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism; and deeply grieving going no-contact with my dad, both of which I expect I’ll write more about at some point.

The faint light that’s been guiding no more than the next few steps has been my practices: my relationship with my journal pals and favorite supplies, my tarot practice, my altar practice. In a season like this, the practices feel more dull and shallow—they are harder to get into, they don’t shine and shimmer as much. But they keep me connected. They keep me nourished, if less than ideally so. They keep me going, which is the whole point.

The fact that I am arriving here this morning to write this, and that I have been able to so far write 900 words in about 30 minutes with ease and joy, is entirely due to my keeping up with said practices. It’s due to having a steady, accessible, and joyful practice of noticing those moments of connection between my system and my surroundings that make flow states & creation possible.

Because you never know. You might be a day or a week or a month away from feeling like yourself again. Maybe not the self you are familiar with and recognize, but a self that feels no less true and right and good because of its newness. And on that day—maybe it’s a change in the weather, or the subtle change in the angle of the sunlight as it falls through the trees, maybe it’s being reminded that you love this one particular blues bar-sounding band with such fierce and ecstatic devotion that revisiting the well-known grooves and riffs revives something in you that has been dormant so long that you were convinced it was dead—because of your practice, you will be able to recognize that feeling of openness, of curiosity, of an empty space that opens up inside you but in a way that feels exciting instead of petrifying, and you will know what to start, and how, which is really all that you need to know.

Me, the person who hasn’t written an essay or an email in over 6 months and just churned out this post in less than an hour, assures you that this is possible for you, too.

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The Fifth Spirit Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess

While I haven’t been able to write reliably or satisfyingly and have done fuck-all in the last year to promote my business, I HAVE been simmering a lot of cool stuff behind-the-scenes, which I am excited and relieved to have enough energy & momentum that it feels possible to finally share with you. New name (!!!!!) announcements are coming for both myself (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and this Substack space, and I will soon start to share more about the body of work I’ve been developing (with the help of some rad witches,) a framework and ecosystem for nervous system change, embodiment, and creative risk called Soft Animal Magic. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

The first offering under the banner of Soft Animal Magic are tarot readings, which are sliding scale and now booking for the fall. I even have some availability this week! I’d love to pull cards for you if you’re feeling creatively stuck to help you connect to the feelings & practices that will make writing & imagining & creating feel possible again.

READ MORE ABOUT SOFT ANIMAL MAGIC TAROT READINGS