No Words

I've got no words.

I'm three pieces behind, and yet all I have mental energy for is sitting on my bed watching hours and hours of hockey. I can't even begin to write this without feeling a kind of anxiety and frustration that is fairly nameless, my words eaten up in the blackness of my brain.

It's fucking baseball. (I don't normally curse on here.) It's not like I'm over here crafting the greatest speeches the world has ever seen. It's baseball. It's a piece on MLB and social media; a piece on the Texas Rangers minor leagues; a piece on Jurickson Profar. It's nothing earth-shattering, nothing mind boggling, nothing that should be causing me this much pain and heartache.

Writing is who I am, though, and if I cannot write, I am a failure.

I've beaten this particular drum before, attempted to exorcise my demons through written word, forcing myself to put fingers to keyboard despite my complete numbness towards creation.

It's extremely easy not to try, as I wrote earlier this week, plagiarizing myself in my utter lack of creativity. It's easy to curl up in a ball of non-being, losing myself in stupid tweets about hockey and an utter indifference towards my responsibilities.

Though, who would want me to write right now? My words are insipid and uninspired, my ideas flabby as my body, and I delete far more than I can. I've had so much coffee, and yet I still feel exhausted. Nothing works.

I've got no words.

On baseball, burnout, and the lure of giving up.

We all know the sporting cliches, the words and phrases supposed to pull from us the very last ounces of reserve. Give until you have no more, then find that last bit and give again, yes?

That sentiment is true other places than sports, as I’m sure everyone would agree. We see it in the workplace, we see it in school, we see it in life itself. The only problem with this is: When do you stop? When is okay to not juice the last few dregs of your soul, of your mind, of your heart into what you’re doing? When is it okay to look back and take a break?

Or can you ever?

Baseball is as big a part of my life as some people’s significant others surely are. Now, I don’t say that in a cheeky “baseball is my boyfriend!” kind of way, because that’s not who I am. For me, it’s just an immutable fact, like “my eyes are green” or “my wrists are screwed up.” Baseball is a part of my being, which is why being at a place where it’s hard to write about it, even harder to work up any real and true passion for it hurts.

I’ve been burned out before. In some ways, I still am: I played flute for eleven years, making it my major and my life, and walked away after I graduated. It’s now been almost a year and a half since I walked across that stage, and I’ve been able to play flute with a real sense of peace maybe four times in these last few months. It’s hard to have to be perfect.

I don’t mean that in some kind of self-indulgent way. I’m well aware that “perfection isn’t a destination, but a journey,” but that journey is what’s killing me. It’s nearly impossible to be good, much less great, at everything, but what else less is worth anything? If I’m not close to the best at this writing, at my “real job,” at everything but the parts of life that don’t leave physical evidence, then what am I?

Of course, it's really easy to contemplate the easy way out. If you can't be the best at anything, then why try? Just float along in a sea of mediocrity, never trying to be good, because failure only happens when you try. 

That's where I am right now, to be quite honest. At the intersection of doubt, exhaustion, and frustration, knowing what I don't know but not having time or energy to learn it. 

I may not write very much this year, and it kills me inside to realize that. Because what am I, if not a writer?